What is Reddit's opinion of Motorola Camera?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

"The new Moto Camera app is optimized for 2016 Moto devices and integrated with Google Photos."

It's a bit worrisome that it doesn't just have a new name "Moto Camera" vs "Motorola Camera" but an entirely new play store entry:

com.motorola.camera vs com.motorola.cameraone.

I'm hoping there will be an upgrade path, I really like the more traditional interface (tap to focus) and the Google Photos integration, even if older devices don't get the full feature set (professional mode). At least it looks like camera api v2 is finally coming to the 2016 Motos. It also appears that it and its features aren't coming to the current gen Moto Xs.

You don't flash APKs through TWRP. You just run them using a file manager or something.

It should work fine, but Motorola Camera is already on the Play Store.

AICP here. I've experienced similar problems, yeah.

After a reboot the official Google Camera doesn't work right away, or takes a long time to start or crashes directly.

But if I start the Motorola Camera (not Moto Camera) and then try the google Camera again it works right away and mostly without problems.

Another thing I notice is that the Google Camera is slower than the Motorola Camera... but I'm not a heavy user of cameras so I didn't test it too much.

Better assume so. It has never been available for G3 either...

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.motorola.camera - you still get this old one last updated 2016 though?

The new ones are:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.motorola.cameraone

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.motorola.camera2

Well, the shadow of Google's ownership was a bit longer than its actual ownership - it took Lenovo some time to pretty much fire the entire R&D and software division.

All the puzzle pieces to allow not only rapid software update but also to keep feature parity among already released devices were put into place under Google. Moto features like the Moto Camera and the Moto App were made updateable via the Play Store just like all the other, now Google centric, features.

In 2016 Lenovo started to artificially re-lock feature-updates behind the paywall of having to get a new phone.

The first indication that this was happening and going to happen was when they did not update the aging Motorola Camera app but started to list an alternative Moto Camera app instead.

Again, a simple APK mod removing the launch restrictions makes the camera fully functional on the older Moto devices: https://forum.xda-developers.com/moto-x-style/themes-apps/moto-camera-6-0-43-10-modded-apk-t3459690 - locking these new features away was purely a marketing decision.

And this "no new software features unless you buy a new phone" is definitely the polar opposite of the vision that company had under Google.

But intentionally stopping the deployment of newer versions of Motorola system apps and features to older devices is a massively anti-consumer move.