Motorola's efforts to fix Moto G5s Plus camera issues have been futile so far

Hundreds of Motorola Moto G5s Plus users have been complaining about serious camera issues ever since the device launched (back in August last year). Reported problems include blurry/grainy images, degradation in picture quality of captured images, in-depth mode lag, slow shutter speed, glitchy videos, and more. The product, it appears, did not undergo a thorough QA process.

Camera behaving erratic

One can see long threads(1,2) on Motorola/Lenovo help forum voicing the sheer disappointment of G5s Plus users over issues plaguing the handset’s camera. We have selected a few user comments to give you a more clear picture of the matter. Take a look:

1. While using the slow motion video mode, the quality of the video certainly decreases to about 50%.
2. Sometimes the images that are captured using the normal camera get pixilated when zoomed.
3. While using the depth mode, the focus does not actually sets on the the object clicked (the upper area gets focused instead of the clicked portion)
4. While editing a depth mode captured image, it does take pretty much time to save (even once the progress loader got stuck and unfortunately I had to close my camera and the photo did not get saved)
5. Panorama mode’s images are a bit pixelated.
6. Low Light images are distorted when zoomed for viewing the saved photos.
7. Is the real time zooming provided in case of professional mode ? (I didn’t get when I used it)

There is a serious concern with the Moto g5s plus camera both with the front facing and rear one. The depth enable mode is absolutely rubbish, front camera is quite ordinary and the picture lags when we switch to the recent photos.The phone which I bought for it’s pros that was the camera is the biggest con of this phone.

I am facing shutter lag issues while clicking pictures….will the company provide an update or a fix for that???

The camera is too slow when saving images! Especially depth-enabled photos.

Low light performance is worst and the camera is dead slow.

I don’t know whether its an software issue or hardware issue, before taking photo from front and dual camera rear its shows great photo in viewfinder but just after photo is taken Camera post processing it becomes dull and pixelated.

Left: image in view finder, Right: after camera processing

Similar reports can be seen on micro-blogging site Twitter as well.

https://twitter.com/decoportellas/status/974983298375213059
https://twitter.com/AravindAlex5/status/969244651621363712
https://twitter.com/indumat94817856/status/956495972623724544
https://twitter.com/npawanthanay/status/953160391869136898

That said, now let us take a look at what the company has been saying and doing in this regard.

Motorola’s take on the matter

Different MotoAgents have been actively addressing the matter in question from time to time, and here’s what they have been saying

September (2017)

Thanks for bringing all of these to our attention. I’ve passed these to our product team and we’ll have improvements for the camera in a future update. I wish I could provide a time frame for it, but I can’t.

October

We’ll have improvements for the camera in a future update. I wish I could provide a time frame for it, but I can’t.

October (again)

Hi guys. Were you able to get a camera update via the Play Store? We started a staged roll out via the Play Store last week to have the camera updated.

December

We want to follow if you’re still having issues with the latest camera update. It should be Version 7.0.66.6. You can reply to me and let me know what specific issue are you having after updating your camera with its latest software update.

February (2018)

Sorry for the long wait. We escalated your concern and we’re waiting for an update. We’ll let you know.

April – One of the MotoAgents updated those affected a couple of days back saying

There’s a new update for the camera, make sure it’s up to date. Let us know how it goes

And just yesterday, with users continuing to report the issues they furthermore added

Thanks for your input. There should be an update in the future but we don’t have any timing to share. Stay tuned!

See both the recent statements here:

Conclusion

Seemingly, the updates pushed out by the company haven’t made much of a difference, as users continue to complain about camera-related problems till date. Looking at the amount of time that has passed since the camera-issues were first reported, we fail to understand why it is taking so long for Motorola to offer their G5s Plus users the camera quality and features they paid for.

We hope the company figures a good way out of this mess. What is your take on the matter? Let us know in the comments section below.

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