Is Android's CameraInfo.orientation correctly documented? Incorrectly implemented?

Question

In Android you can get a description of the properties of a Camera by retrieving a CameraInfo. I\'m interested in orientation, as described at http

Answer 1

1) Can anyone confirm that the first line of the documentation is in fact wrong, and the example is right?

You have thoroughly addressed this already within your answer, thanks for the follow up explanation!

2) Has anyone observed a changing value of CameraInfo.orientation? Is there evidence in docs that this is legal behavior, or is it likely a bug in the device?

While I can easily imagine this to be a bug in principle, it would still be a pretty severe one affecting all sorts of imaging related apps due to the resulting information being embedded via EXIF in photos for example (other EXIF related bugs aside for a moment).

Thus, I'd consider it more likely to be an actual feature of one of those thousands of Android devices out there, i.e. a camera with an option to physically rotate the lens. While I'm not aware of an Android based one currently, there used to be such phones available, e.g. the LG VX7000 (~2004) or the Samsung SCH-a930 (~2006) (see e.g. Rotating Camera Lens within the manual), so I'd not be surprised if something like this would appear in the Android sphere as well.

Incidentally, there is an unanswered question Why are my pics upside down or backwards. within Customer Questions & Answers for Samsung SCH-A930 regarding the latter:

Lately my pics have been upside down or backwards. Why is this happening and how can I fix it.

This might actually be a bug in the otherwise functioning rotation adjustment hardware/firmware ;)

So in conclusion, I think it might be best to actually prepare for the orientation being able to change until you have more definite evidence for this to be a buggy device indeed.