What is Camera2 API? Check if your Smartphone supports it

This blog post is trying to shed some light into one of Android’s fragmentation corners – one that’s mainly relevant for people interested in more advanced photography and videography apps to take manual control over their image composition.

What is API?

Before going into the details of the Camera 2 API, let us first see, what does an API mean. API, Application Programming Interface is the mechanism through which various software components communicate. API defines what can be done by different software and extend to which any software has access to the system. Moving on to camera part, a Camera API defines what all things that the camera application, show preview, capture images, shoot video, using different sensors, shutter speed of the camera etc

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What is Camera2 API?

Camera 2 API was introduced by Google with the Android Version 5. Before Camera 2 API, camera functions of any device was very limited. Camera app could just be used to preview and capture images and take a video. With Camera 2 API, Google gives camera developers options to do more with the camera. Control the shutter speed(ISO), focus, RAW capture etc. This helps third-party developers to include more features in their applications with the tools they are given through the API.

Since the introduction of camera 2 API with the Lollipop version of Android, it is used a standard camera API in every device. But Google limits the level of implementation of API in different phones. Every device is not given full access to the features it can implement using the Camera 2 API.

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How to check Camera 2 API support status for your smartphone

All you need to do is download a simple app called Camera2 API probe from the Google Play Store. Download and install this app on your Android smartphone.

Open the app, it will give you the details about your front and rear camera modules.

It will show two sections: Camera ID: 0 and Camera ID: 1. The first one represents the rear camera and the second one represents the selfie camera.

camera2api check

You can see all the information about your smartphone camera in this app. Now use the following keys to check if your device supports Camera 2 API or not.

Level-3 – The manufacturer of the device has added some additional features to the camera hardware including YUV reprocessing, RAW image capture, and more.

Full – The smartphone fully supports all major capabilities of the Camera2 API.

Limited – The phone supports only some of the features of Camera2 API.

Legacy – Your phone only supports the Camera1 API features. So, no support for Camera2 API.

That’s all about the Camera2 API.