Question

So I am using the Android camera to take pictures within an Android app. About 90% of my users have no issues, but the other 10% get a picture that returns pure black or a weird jumbling of pixels.

Has anyone else seen this behavior? or have any ideas why it happens?

Examples:

Black:

Jumbled:

Answer 1

I’ve had similar problems like this.
The problem in short is: Missing data.

It occurs to a Bitmap/Stream if the datastream was interrupted for too long or it is accidentally no more available.

Another example where it may occur: Downloading and uploading images.
If the user disables all of a sudden Wifi/mobile network no more data can be transmitted.
You end up in a splattered image.

The image will appear/view okay(where okay means black/splattered, it’s still viewable!) but is invalid internally (missing or corrupted information).

If it’s not too critical you can try to move all the data into a Bitmap object (BitmapFactory.decode*) and test if the returned Bitmap is null. If yes the data possibly is corrupted.

This is just solving the consequences of the problem, as you can guess.
The better way would be to take the problem on the foot:
Ensure a good connection to your data source (Large enough, stout buffer).
Try to avoid unneccesary casts (e.g. from char to int)
Use the correct type of buffers (Either Reader/Writer for character streams or InputStream/OutputStream for byte streams).