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iPhone 12 Pro iOS 14 Frequent Camera Crash Problem (Cause found but no fix - related to wallpapers?)
- Thread starter joeblow7777
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Eventually it has something to do with the Russian version of iOS?
Is the replacement device really a different device and not the same?
Is the replacement device really a different device and not the same?
It's a different device. I was eligible for express replacement. I had the new device before I sent back the old one! At least that proves it's not a hardware problem, unless I am EXTREMEMLY unlucky and happened to get 2/2 devices with the same rare defect.
It came in a white box, but my understanding based on the serial number and research is that it is a new device. They set aside a supply of new devices specifically to be replacements. The 12 Pro Max had only been on the market for about 6 weeks when I got my replacement. I don't think they even have a supply of refurbs yet.
This is what I think is happening.
The native iOS camera app adds custom info to a photo's metadata during capture.
That's what happens normally.
Sometimes, where there is IN-sufficient available DRAM, the info is NOT written !
For this case, the app hiccups because of a momentary didReceiveMemoryWarning issue.
When other software in the camera app subsequently tries to read the data it is expecting (perhaps later in the capture pipeline), if it's NOT there, it will crash the app !
This can occur with the native iOS app OR with any third-party app !
DRAM Availability is a very tricky thing to master, even for those who work directly for Apple in their Camera App Dev group.
If the problem occurs mostly on an iPhone that had been Completely Idle beforehand, that this is very likely what's going on.
Recommend you remove ALL apps from background / suspended state, & see if that helps solve the problem.
If NOT, there is something else going on.
The native iOS camera app adds custom info to a photo's metadata during capture.
That's what happens normally.
Sometimes, where there is IN-sufficient available DRAM, the info is NOT written !
For this case, the app hiccups because of a momentary didReceiveMemoryWarning issue.
When other software in the camera app subsequently tries to read the data it is expecting (perhaps later in the capture pipeline), if it's NOT there, it will crash the app !
This can occur with the native iOS app OR with any third-party app !
DRAM Availability is a very tricky thing to master, even for those who work directly for Apple in their Camera App Dev group.
If the problem occurs mostly on an iPhone that had been Completely Idle beforehand, that this is very likely what's going on.
Recommend you remove ALL apps from background / suspended state, & see if that helps solve the problem.
If NOT, there is something else going on.
It seems to occur whether the device was recently idle or not. The only pattern I've noticed is that it doesn't seem to occur until at least a few days since the phone's last restart, so my current workaround is just to restart my phone once a day.
I can also try to keep fewer background/suspended apps, but of course, iOS is supposed to manage that. My last phone had half the RAM of the 12 Pro Max and it never had problems.
I hope I have some answers, but you may check for any a rogue app causing those issues that doesn't play well with IOS 14. You may want to check if you have old apps that haven't been updated in a while from the app store. IOS is such a tightly integrated OS that issues with some apps could cause the phone to act up. I had issues with a banking app that caused my phone to freeze and overheat in the past.
Try and keep less stuff open in the background and close all but your most essential apps when you’re not using them. The fact that it doesn’t occur for a few days after you reboot points to a RAM allocation issue. When you reboot, all the apps running in the background get closed and the RAM released. When you open the camera app, it requests a TON of RAM at once. So if there’s a lot of RAM already used, it’s not enough for the camera and it crashes.
The fact that it’s happening after a factory reset and even on another device means it’s most likely something in the way you’re using it.
Try and keep clearing out most apps frozen in memory and I bet the problem goes away.
Did you saw in my video that I don’t have any apps running in background except camera app and it still crashed
I did a full restore through Finder on my Mac last Sunday and did set up my iPhone as new (second time since I own 12). Camera works fine but I see it starts to work more slowly every day I am sure that it will crash finally.
I've considered this but I'm honestly not sure that it makes a difference. It also still means that something is wrong. It's not a "you're using it wrong" situation. I'm not some crazy power user. I use my 12 Pro Max in the same way with the same apps that I used on my 8 Plus for 3 years before now. It had an A11 and 3GB of RAM and never crashed. I also have an iPad Air 4 which also has less RAM than the 12 Pro Max.
How is my normal usage now overwhelming the resources of the most powerful iOS device I've ever used? I'm used to using a phone with half as much RAM and I seldom bothered to close background/suspended apps. Everyone says you're not supposed to have to. iOS is supposed to manage that.
I have noticed that many times when camera app crashes it was not even shown in background apps, like I have never opened it. So it was impossible to restart only an app. Second thing, clearing RAM did not help at all, when camera starts to crash the only solution is to restart a phone.
I just created an account specifically to reply to this thread. The same thing is happening to me. I have some additional info if you all are interested.
Oddly, this problem started for me many months ago (possibly even over a year ago) on my iPhone X. I had gotten it second-hand, so I just assumed that it was a junky phone and that my new phone would be fine. I bought the new iPhone 12 Mini the day it came out and did the wifi transfer. It was fine for a few weeks, but recently the camera crashing started again.
I thought that it would only happen when my iPhone restarted overnight, or at least when I had plugged it in overnight. But last night I left it unplugged, it didn't restart, and the camera was crashing today.
Everything you all have described is exactly what I'm experiencing. Try to take a photo, the camera goes black, no photo is recorded, the camera app closes. Continues to happen until I restart and then is fine for a few days to a week or so.
More symptoms/info:
Oddly, this problem started for me many months ago (possibly even over a year ago) on my iPhone X. I had gotten it second-hand, so I just assumed that it was a junky phone and that my new phone would be fine. I bought the new iPhone 12 Mini the day it came out and did the wifi transfer. It was fine for a few weeks, but recently the camera crashing started again.
I thought that it would only happen when my iPhone restarted overnight, or at least when I had plugged it in overnight. But last night I left it unplugged, it didn't restart, and the camera was crashing today.
Everything you all have described is exactly what I'm experiencing. Try to take a photo, the camera goes black, no photo is recorded, the camera app closes. Continues to happen until I restart and then is fine for a few days to a week or so.
More symptoms/info:
- Every time it happens on my new phone, my wearable (fitness tracker) disconnects from the phone's Bluetooth.
- I have a Magsafe case. When I first put the Magsafe case on the phone, there was an animation on the screen, I guess indicating that the case was installed properly. One of the recent times when the camera crashed, the Magsafe case animation happened again.
- I had a third-party keyboard installed that was kind of niche and I thought maybe that was causing problems. Deleted it, camera crashing persists. I don't have any other unusual apps
- I'm in the US
Thanks for the info, but funny enough, my case is almost the complete opposite.
- I don't think any of my crashes have occurred while connected to a bluetooth device.
- I don't have any Magsafe accessories.
- I have never installed a 3rd party keyboard on this phone.
- I'm in Canada.
🤷♂️
Yeah, I didn't think that any of those were causes, but I did find it interesting that the bluetooth disconnects when it happens. Indicates to me that it's a system-wide problem, as opposed to just a camera issue. The Magsafe thing as well, since it was almost like the phone did a micro-restart when the camera crashed. Possibly more evidence that it's related to RAM, as others have suggested.
I think it is system wide. When it happens, until I restart the whole phone is unstable. It starts with the camera but other apps will occasionally crash too once it's in that state.
It sure would be nice if iOS offered some way to see RAM usage like the task manager in Windows.
In my case Bluetooth was switching off while camera was crashing. In the worst case also screen was starting to shut off randomly, when touched it was coming back to life. I am showing that in this yt video:
Okay, it has been EXACTLY one week since I did full restore and set up a phone as new. Camera was working all these days perfectly fine but today it started to work more and more sluggish up to this moment when camera finally crashed.. but I have noticed one more thing. I've tried to take several photos of course none of them was captured because camera was crashing. BUT some of these photos were captured as a short 2 second VIDEOS (I had a Live Photos enabled). So in my theory processing of the photos is not optimized properly and the app just cannot finish processing so it kills the app.. When I did a little testing my phone got very warm on the back because of this.
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I’ve mentioned this before but I’ll say it again for people new to the thread, if you’re having this problem make sure that you turn on the setting to send analytics to Apple. At least that means that Apple should be getting data from out crashes.
So has anyone experienced this exact problem on an OS prior to iOS 14, or can we assume that it's inherent to the current OS?
That being said, I was using iOS 14 on my iPhone 8 Plus for weeks before switching to the 12 Pro Max, with no problems.
That being said, I was using iOS 14 on my iPhone 8 Plus for weeks before switching to the 12 Pro Max, with no problems.
On mine it is only iOS 14, I think mine iPhone 12 shipped with iOS 14.1 and problem exists since then. Same thing started to happen on Xs after update to iOS 14.2.
Made an account here just to reply.
I've had had a few 11 Pro Maxes, kept replacing them due to bad screen uniformity.
I've had 2 of them for long enough to see this exact issue, a 64gb model (now returned) and a 256 gb model.
I still have this problem on my 256 gb model that I decided to keep (for a while, still in the return period) , iOS 14.3.
It's the exact same problem you guys have, here is what I noticed so far:
1. It seems to crash more often if I am using the iOS Dark Mode.
2. Sometimes I can bypass the crashing by disabling smart HDR.
3. Video also crashes when this happens, but if I switch it to 1080p I can keep recording.
4. Sometimes after the crashes it starts working again, after a while, but video continues to crash (assuming I have it set to 4k).
5. More often than not, I have to restart it for everything to work properly again.
6. You can predict the crash incoming soon, when you start taking photos and you swipe the camera up to get to the springboard, you can notice a delay, it's not instant as it is with fresh restart.
7. DFU restore did not solve it, I did one yesterday, no backups used, clean slate, but it crashed today.
8. After a fresh restart, you can open a ton of apps and not have any app restarts when you use the camera, but after like a day or so, everytime you use the camera, most of the apps get restarted, really looks like a ram/memory leak issue.
9. Tried to reproduce this manually, stressing the **** out of the phone on purpose, opening a ton of apps, installing, downloading, everything I could think of, but I could not! it always needs like 24 hours or so for this to happen.
10. My personal opinion is that this is not a hardware issue, makes no sense. But it sucks big time, it happens when I need my camera the most and this makes it a very valid reason to return.
I've had had a few 11 Pro Maxes, kept replacing them due to bad screen uniformity.
I've had 2 of them for long enough to see this exact issue, a 64gb model (now returned) and a 256 gb model.
I still have this problem on my 256 gb model that I decided to keep (for a while, still in the return period) , iOS 14.3.
It's the exact same problem you guys have, here is what I noticed so far:
1. It seems to crash more often if I am using the iOS Dark Mode.
2. Sometimes I can bypass the crashing by disabling smart HDR.
3. Video also crashes when this happens, but if I switch it to 1080p I can keep recording.
4. Sometimes after the crashes it starts working again, after a while, but video continues to crash (assuming I have it set to 4k).
5. More often than not, I have to restart it for everything to work properly again.
6. You can predict the crash incoming soon, when you start taking photos and you swipe the camera up to get to the springboard, you can notice a delay, it's not instant as it is with fresh restart.
7. DFU restore did not solve it, I did one yesterday, no backups used, clean slate, but it crashed today.
8. After a fresh restart, you can open a ton of apps and not have any app restarts when you use the camera, but after like a day or so, everytime you use the camera, most of the apps get restarted, really looks like a ram/memory leak issue.
9. Tried to reproduce this manually, stressing the **** out of the phone on purpose, opening a ton of apps, installing, downloading, everything I could think of, but I could not! it always needs like 24 hours or so for this to happen.
10. My personal opinion is that this is not a hardware issue, makes no sense. But it sucks big time, it happens when I need my camera the most and this makes it a very valid reason to return.
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100% same in my case. I think you did a great summary of a problem. Maybe creator of the topic should edit first post and use your points as a guide in this topic?
Thanks, wish I didn't have to though. So we now have 11 Pro Maxes, iPhone 12's, 12 Pro Maxes, XS's Max, surely can't be hardware. Bad news is we are in the minority and Apple will probably ignore/pass on this and we'll have to wait until the iOS 15 and or some update that has ram manangement enhancements.
I downloaded some app from the store that tells me the available RAM, so far noticed that when using the camera and actually taking a picture it usually clears about 1.2 gigs of ram or so, but when the issue happens it can't clear more than 800 mbs or so.
I am now always closing every app to see what happens in a day or two.
Some things that I think may be fueling this or maybe just wishful thinking on my side: changing light/dark mode while having many apps in the background, using apps that require a lot of browsing such as facebook (almost always killed when using the camera), pinterest, the official reddit app, changing wallpapers many times through the day while having many background apps open.
Not everyone will get this issue but I am 90% sure it can be reproduced on all the models from the XS upwards, most likely the combination of apps used and usage leads to this, which obviously is still far from ok.
I'll probably reach the point of just using the phone with 2-3 must need apps, system apps and camera, just to see if this still happens.
I'll keep posting when I come across interesting things, as long as I still have the device.