Mapillary should support the 0.5x ultrawide camera on Android devices.
Many Android phones, especially Samsung devices, already allow access to the ultrawide camera through Camera2 API, but Mapillary currently seems to only use the main camera on some devices.
Supporting the 0.5x camera would help capture wider streets and improve the mapping experience.
Please consider adding support for the 0.5x ultrawide camera on Android.
Sorry if my English is not very good — I used ChatGPT to help translate this suggestion.
The latest Mapillary app supports the 0.5x ultrawide camera on devices that expose it through Android’s Camera2 API (even in the latest few versions). If the device has an ultrawide lens, the app should show a 0.5x zoom button in the camera UI (alternatively, try pinch-zooming into the camera).
For example, my S23 has a 0.5x camera in Mapillary, while my previous S21 didn’t, as I remember.
At the same time it doesn’t work for you, what to check:
Android version - it has to be 11 or newer.
Device support - some manufacturers don’t expose the ultrawide camera through the logical camera’s zoom ratio range on all models. In that case, the 0.5x button won’t appear because the device doesn’t advertise support for it. I think I’ve seen Samsung devices which had a 0.5x camera but only in their native cameras.
App version - Make sure you’re running the latest version of Mapillary from the Play Store.
You are spot on. Your insight about Samsung not exposing the ultrawide camera through the logical camera is 100% correct. I am using a Galaxy A42 5G (Android 12, latest Mapillary app), and Samsung did exactly what you suspected: they didn’t include the ultrawide lens in the logical camera’s zoom ratio range.
While Mapillary is affected by this, advanced pro-video apps like mcpro24fps (and some custom GCam mods) have found a way to bypass it. When I checked the system hardware via the Camera2 API Probe app, the ultrawide lens is clearly exposed as a distinct Physical Camera ID. Apps like mcpro24fps simply query these physical IDs directly instead of relying on Samsung’s default logical camera implementation, and it works flawlessly.
Since many contributors use devices with this issue, relying only on Google’s standard API leaves out a lot of people who want to map their local areas but are stuck at 1.0x.
Do you think the dev team could implement a fallback mode in future updates? If the logical zoom doesn’t detect it, the app could scan for discrete physical IDs and let users force-enable the 0.5x camera.
This would help many users to contribute wide-angle imagery. Tks for your support!
I am currently on holiday. I will take a look later when I am back (@Anders maybe you have time this week?). In general, there might be multiple reasons, such as other requirements for camera mode selection that can filter out a 0.5 zoom camera, issues in the code (though it was pretty straightforward), etc.
@Lowiekse, there is no workaround; we have to update the implementation.