A couple of days back, Google received flack for two simultaneous reasons, one about the rear camera screen cracking of its own accord in the Nexus 6P, and the other about some Nexus 5X devices reportedly showing an upside down preview of images clicked through the camera. Google engineers have now come out with the explanation for the upside down previews and also the solution to overcome the issue. Thankfully, the issue does not seem too complicated or beyond repair, rather seems only an oversight from the developers, which can be solved with a small update.
According to the engineers the problem with the previews boil down to how the phone was made and how the developers took advantage of Google’s older camera API. Due to manufacturing reasons and to accommodate the sensor chip, the Nexus 5X main sensor had to be mounted in a less common, but not unknown, reverse landscape orientation, thus requiring a further need from the developers to explicitly set the preview rotation in their code.
Third party apps do not usually need to change the orientation at all and work flawlessly on the Nexus 5X. However, since developers still use the old camera API, a line of code to set the preview rotation is enough to solve the problem.
With this justifiable explanation from Google, users who have been affected by the upside down preview function can breathe a sigh of relief and wait for an update which will hopefully solve the issue. Google and LG are reportedly trying to reach out to most third party app developers to ask them to use the new camera API, however if any third party app causes an upside down preview in your Nexus 5X, you can also let the developer know who will now know how to address the issue.