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Poll results: Remembering pro settings in Lumia Camera Beta

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Last month we asked you about your preferences regarding a new feature introduced in the Lumia Camera Beta app: remembering pro settings.  As the feature is implemented now, your pro settings are remembered when you resume the app within 30 minutes.  However, if you only return to the app much later, the pro settings are reverted to their default values.  The intention with this is to avoid missing a great shot due to incorrect settings. 

The Lumia Camera team launched a poll to gather feedback about this approach, with the question:"When should Lumia Camera revert pro settings to default values?"  Almost 350 of you responded to the poll and many also provided additional comments.  Below you can review the results.

  • 29% preferred the current approach of reverting 30 minutes after the last session
  • 19% preferred remembering the settings until the phone is restarted
  • 16% preferred reverting after 2 hours
  • 8% preferred reverting after 1 day
  • 28% suggested something other than one of the proposed alternatives

Among the suggestions under Other, two stood out.  Over one quarter of the "Other" comments requested a way to manually revert the pro settings in the camera UI.  Another quarter of the "Other" comments talked about providing a new setting in the app to configure your preference.  Saving a few custom presets was also mentioned several times, as was never reverting the settings.  Other suggestions included prompting the user, reverting when the app is forcibly closed, as well as some other time intervals.

Some of the comments to the blog post and on Twitter also reveal some of the thinking behind these responses:

"I do like it when I launch the camera and all the manual settings are back to auto in a new scenario, but I also sometimes like to keep the custom settings for a period of time." -- GoodThings2Life

"Why not just put a toggle switch on the screen where the camera will remember your last professional setting(until you change it) permanently and just toggle back to default setting to take a normal picture. Then you can toggle back to your professional setting to continue talking your professional pictures at any point in the future." -- NOLATechy

"Preference: Add a "Custom" setting that remains unchanged; you manually change it when you want to. Otherwise, a 2-hour period seems good for retaining settings." -- Cui Dado

"How about this: - In preferences, choose if app should reset settings after 30 minutes, or never reset. - Add a reset all settings control on the cAMera screen. No surprises, user decides. Additionally, custom presets is a good idea." -- Lars

 

On behalf of the Lumia Camera team, a big thanks goes out to all those that responded to the poll and provided their feedback.  The team is now taking these insights into account as they strive to make a better product.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 18, 2015
    Is all this perhaps just unnecessarily complicated? Instead of adding new buttons or options, why not just take the user back to the app's Auto mode after 30 min, without resetting Pro model's manual settings? That way, the user can still quickly switch to the earlier manual settings by going into Pro mode if desired, while retaining the speedy jack-of-all-trades benefit of Auto by making it the default after 30 minutes. That said, if you guys have the time and resources, would still love to have a number of preset manual settings like on the 808 PureView.