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Test procedure

How to test your camera

Ten minutes, a real document (ID card, prescription, anything with small text), good indoor light. The app has four toggles and a lens switcher. Vary them methodically and note what gives you a sharp image.

01

Pick your subject

Put a physical document flat on a well-lit table. A prescription label, driver’s licence, or a page of printed text with 8–10pt font is ideal. Hold the phone the way you would if you were scanning it for real — roughly 15–25 cm above the subject. That’s the distance where the S24+/S26+ main lens fails; it’s the distance we care about.

02

Open the camera screen

Tap Open the camera test. Allow the camera permission when your browser asks. If you block it by mistake, a red banner will tell you — allow it from your browser’s address-bar icon and reload.

At the top you’ll see a row of lens pills — one per physical camera your browser can reach. Pills marked 🌸 are likely ultrawide lenses based on their label. On most Samsungs the back lenses show up as “back 0”, “back 1”, “back 2” — usually main, ultrawide, and telephoto in some order. Write down the labels you see.

03

Know your four toggles

AFContinuous autofocus
When on, the camera keeps refocusing constantly. This is what hunts at close range on the S24+/S26+. When off, focus is whatever it last was and stays there.
TapTap to focus
When on, tapping anywhere on the preview tells the camera to focus once at that point. A yellow ring flashes at the tap location. This is often the trick that makes a blurry subject snap sharp.
LockFocus lock
When on, as soon as focus is acquired, the app reads the current focus distance and pins it. No more hunting. If your device doesn’t support manual focus, this will say “n/a”.
TorchTorch / flash
Phone flashlight. Try with and without — some phones focus better with more light, some fare worse because the torch blinds the sensor.

If a toggle shows n/a, your phone’s browser doesn’t expose that control. Note which ones are unavailable — that’s useful on its own.

04

Run the combinations

For each lens, try these combinations and capture one shot each. After each capture, look at the blur reading in the top strip. Higher is sharper:

  • under 30 — blurry, will not OCR
  • 30–80 — soft, borderline
  • over 80 — sharp, usable
#AFTapLockWhat to do
1onoffoffjust hold steady 3s, capture
2offonofftap the document, wait 1s, capture
3offonontap, wait 1s (lock engages), capture
4ononofftap to override, capture immediately
5ononontap, lock engages, capture

Repeat the whole set for each lens. Every toggle change, tap, and capture is logged automatically — you don’t need to write them down. Just remember which lens + which combination gave the sharpest blur score.

05

Spot-check with the debug panel

Tap the DEBUG button at the top-left. Five tabs:

  • Devices — every camera your browser can reach, with raw capabilities. Compare focusDistance ranges; a very small minimum is the ultrawide giveaway.
  • Capability — what the active lens says it can do.
  • Settings — what it’s actually doing right now (refreshes twice a second).
  • Applied — every constraint we’ve tried, with requested-vs-actual. If a constraint is “dropped” or “clamped”, your phone ignored or limited it.
  • Log — time-ordered list of every action.

The most useful tab for us is Applied. If Focus Lock shows as “ERROR” or “dropped”, that’s a finding in itself.

06

Leave feedback

When you’re done, hit Leave feedback and tell us which lens worked, which toggle combination worked, a blur score if you caught one, and any oddities. If nothing worked, that’s also a finding — report it.

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