Is there any purpose left for the front-facing camera anymore?
 

With some relevance to the Neo900 (some asked if we can upgrade the camera), though not posting it there since it's not entirely focused on that. Is there any use for the front-facing camera anymore? The two main applications were google video (now google hangout) and skype.

1. Google Hangouts doesn't work for the N900. Trying to handshake Google Video fails. This has been the case for at least a year.

2. Skype partially works. Testing a skype call, the receiver sees my (bad quality) video feed but I do not see his. On the receiving end Skype reports 320x240 resolution but the quality still looks terrible and highly pixelated. Without having two-way video, i don't see this as working

3. No meaningful application uses the front-facing camera that I'm aware of

4. If you have the latest 'leaked' Flash 10 binary installed, you can make use of the front video camera at a terrible framerate and color balance (For some reason the camera will only auto-balance on Skype or Google Video (historically), beside that it is always very dark and green when used in any other application).

Are there any alternative video communication software available that I'm not aware of to make this thing useful again?

Re: Is there any purpose left for the front-facing camera anymore?
 

Skype video works fine for me. Are you sure it's not a connection issue?

I have no way to test Google. No one I know uses it and as sure as hell I am not going to start.

Re: Is there any purpose left for the front-facing camera anymore?
 

Last time I was trying to repair my bike front camera proved very useful; I had to make sure I don't have grease all over my face before leaving garage ;)

Re: Is there any purpose left for the front-facing camera anymore?
 

Did you use the Mirror app? When you use it outside of Skype it will be very dark (even outside) and everything will be green tinted.

Re: Is there any purpose left for the front-facing camera anymore?
 

Around Summer 2010 I was attending CVPR 2010. There was a guy in the demo area showing some image processing algorithms he developed and he was using an N900. It involved using the front-facing camera to perform face recognition for some security application but I recall he was getting extremely good quality out of it and great framerate (around 30 fps). It's a shame I didn't ask him the details but this was so long ago.

I was with a fellow colleague of mine (and n900 owner at the time) and even he was surprised at the quality of the front camera. He was the one who brought it up.

Re: Is there any purpose left for the front-facing camera anymore?
 

Front camera works fine for me, while using VoIP cals with video. As for Skype, I wouldn't touch that spyware with a long stick.

Re: Is there any purpose left for the front-facing camera anymore?
 

SMSCON can take a picture with the front camera and email it, after receiving a command via SMS. This should help when trying to locate a lost N900 and the back camera cover is closed.

Re: Is there any purpose left for the front-facing camera anymore?
 

Sure , shoot your face to death :D

Re: Is there any purpose left for the front-facing camera anymore?
 

Front Camera by Vesa Halttunen. Sure, the picture was not the best, but OK for the purpose.

(this was on N9, but I think that usefulness of front camera as such can be discussed regardless of phone model?)

Re: Is there any purpose left for the front-facing camera anymore?
 

Well, I'm sure it works great on the N9. I bring this up specifically for the N900 since, as mentioned before, anything outside of the Phone app the front-facing camera is unable to do color-balance and light-balance and most times everything comes out dark with a dark-green tint.

I don't know what 'magic' the Phone app does when it uses Skype and it initializes the camera so that it autobalances. Has anyone figured it out?