The Mapillary Android app has undergone a full redesign to improve ease of use and make capturing and uploading easier than ever. Read all about it - and watch for these updates coming to iOS soon.
Mapillary 2.0
The Mapillary team is excited to introduce the all-new Mapillary Android app - a project we’ve been calling Mapillary 2.0 internally as a nod to the major upgrade in both user experience and underlying code.
This overhaul includes a complete visual refresh aimed at improving the ease of use of the app. Here are some of the highlights:
All new look and feel across the app
New homepage with quick access to your captures
Action cards to let you know when your captures are ready to upload or processing
Upload progress bar to monitor upload status
Ability to save your login and password with autofill
This major release builds on features we’ve been rolling out over the past year and which you may have noticed coming online:
Automatic Uploading - so your captures can be uploaded automatically when you connect to Wi-Fi, even without opening the Mapillary app
Picture-in-picture support - keep capturing with Mapillary while using another app like Google Maps for navigation
Ability to block addresses - so you don’t have to worry about accidentally uploading imagery of your garage
Faster uploads thanks to better image compression and sampling
What comes next?
We are excited to share this milestone with you, and we have a backlog of exciting features coming your way throughout 2024. Here’s what you can look forward to next on Android:
Support for wide-angle cameras
Ability to view the images you capture outside of the Mapillary app
Updates to the camera to show distance captured and battery life
We invite you to give the app a fresh spin, and please let us know your feedback or leave a review on the Play Store (we appreciate it!). iOS users stay tuned: these updates and more are coming to iOS soon.
Thank you as always for being a part of the Mapillary community and keeping your feature suggestions and bug reports coming. They help us build a better Mapillary for everyone.
/Boris,
Product Manager, on behalf of the whole Mapillary team
Aspect ratio or crop area adjust for deleting car hood. Now 4:3 photos show lots of car hood so the pixels are wasted (I was mentioning it before). 16:9 was perfect.
I know You try to keep the app simple. But it would be great to have some kind of “advanced mode”. I miss display GPS quality, phone temp, storage left etc.
The aspect ratio (4:3) hasn’t changed in this release, it’s been that way for a little while. To explain the reasoning: phone cameras have a native aspect ratio of 4:3. Using 16:9 is just software cropping off and throwing away the top and bottom of the image. This can contain useful information (for example taller buildings), so ideally 4:3 should be used and the phone positioned to avoid the hood of the car when possible (a bit of hood is OK too).
Noted the GPS quality, storage left, etc advanced metrics - we’ll put that on the backlog!
I would add also screen dimming when taking photos. It was there before (to save batery), and it should be there for people don’t want distraction when driving a vehicle. It would be great to have possibility to turn off screen and use just led light to indicate recording (if phone has it, but I think modern phones don’t)
The camera should be set to focus-to-infinity when you are moving quickly (not on foot). I see this isn’t working as expecting though - we are going to investigate a fix.
Please note that on Android setting android.hardware.Camera.Parameters.FOCUS_MODE_INFINITY or creating a android.hardware.camera2.CaptureRequest with set(android.hardware.camera2.CaptureRequest.LENS_FOCUS_DISTANCE, Float.valueOf(0.0f)) does not guarantee focusing at infinity on any camera by design. Focusing at infinity is a camera and device driver capability. For example, although my smartphone does support Android’s Camera v2 API, its cameras do not support the infinity focus mode (but can still focus at infinity using the auto focus mode). In other words, the cameras support Camera.Parameters.FOCUS_MODE_AUTO and Camera.Parameters.FOCUS_MODE_CONTINUOUS_PICTURE only.
Things are very different on iOS because there all layers of the camera stack, beginning at the hardware level over the device driver, the API, and the client app is tightly controlled exclusively by only one manufacturer, where functionality is guaranteed.
So, displaying a button or some other UI control in the Android app to the user that suggest you can set focus to infinity without checking the camera for this capability can be annoying or confusing. Android’s usability guidelines say that apps should not display UI controls for inaccessible or unavailable functionality on a device in the first place. If this is not possible or not desired for other reasons, the affected UI controls should be displayed disabled with an explanation that this functionality is not available on the device (not why it is unavailable).
Hi @GITNE - which Android phone are you using? When I test setting focus to infinity using Open Camera on my pixel 7 things work correctly (I can move my fingers in front of the lens and the camera does not re-focus to them, it maintains focus in the background). Does that work for you?
I am talking about a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini (GT-I9195) with Android 7.1.2. It’s older but it works. And, I use Open Camera too.
When I set the focus to ∞ then the focus shifts and fixes at a certain distance but not true infinity. However, when I set auto focus, point the camera at things very far away (like the sky or a landscape) and take a picture then the camera focuses at true infinity. You can clearly verify this behavior when looking at edges in the resulting images. This happens with all photo apps I have tested so far. So, what is going on? The camera’s auto focus mode is capable of choosing a point to focus on. In infinity focus mode (which does not truly exist on this particular device) the device driver mimics infinity by fixing at some distant point in auto focus mode. Furthermore, the fixed distance depends on what the camera was “looking” at while switching to infinity mode.
Btw, this is exactly one of the things that Android’s Camera v2 API wanted to address: capabilities. Camera v1 API was oblivious to the fact that cameras in Android devices come in all shapes and sizes. Hence, you get class names like CaptureRequest where you request some camera parameters but won’t necessarily get what you request. Please, note also that Android device makers do not have to certify their devices with Google for anything.
That’s a curious indeed, thanks for sharing, @GITNE . You have very deep knowledge on this matter, my admiration
We use Camera2 directly. The task has been created and will be addressed in accordance with priorities (eta - nearest release, like 90%). Will post here when we’re done.
Speaking of Open Camera, I rely on it to take photos at a way lower resolution than the native camera app. I would hope Mapillary doesn’t capture humongous photos. Focus to infinity is now workin on May 20, 2024. Many blurry photos in full daylight. I’m so glad I started using Mapillary after this Feb, 2024 Android release. It still has a long way to go to match what’s available on my Window’s 10 Firefox browser.
It’s older but it works. And, I use Open Camera too.
No wonder it works properly. 