Android camera android.hardware.Camera deprecated

Question

if android.hardware.Camera is deprecated and you cannot use the variable Camera, then what would be the alternative to this?

Answer 1

Faced with the same issue, supporting older devices via the deprecated camera API and needing the new Camera2 API for both current devices and moving into the future; I ran into the same issues -- and have not found a 3rd party library that bridges the 2 APIs, likely because they are very different, I turned to basic OOP principals.

The 2 APIs are markedly different making interchanging them problematic for client objects expecting the interfaces presented in the old API. The new API has different objects with different methods, built using a different architecture. Got love for Google, but ragnabbit! that's frustrating.

So I created an interface focussing on only the camera functionality my app needs, and created a simple wrapper for both APIs that implements that interface. That way my camera activity doesn't have to care about which platform its running on...

I also set up a Singleton to manage the API(s); instancing the older API's wrapper with my interface for older Android OS devices, and the new API's wrapper class for newer devices using the new API. The singleton has typical code to get the API level and then instances the correct object.

The same interface is used by both wrapper classes, so it doesn't matter if the App runs on Jellybean or Marshmallow--as long as the interface provides my app with what it needs from either Camera API, using the same method signatures; the camera runs in the App the same way for both newer and older versions of Android.

The Singleton can also do some related things not tied to the APIs--like detecting that there is indeed a camera on the device, and saving to the media library.

I hope the idea helps you out.