Last week, the hash-tag #nexus7bricked ended up trending as countless users of Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 devices chimed in to say that the Android 5.0.2 update had left them permanently bricked. Unable to boot or respond to any keypress, owners have been left with completely unusable phones and tablets.
Android Police reports that Nexus 5 owners whose phone has survived the 5.0.2 ordeal are now facing a new issue though. After updating to 5.1, many users are finding that the camera no longer works correctly.
Using the camera often results in the app force-closing and crashing. It doesn’t occur every time but does have a very high frequency.
A bug report filed with Google notes that a reboot — or sometimes several — usually fixes the issue for a day or two but it always returns. The user who reported the issue managed to trace the cause to faulty code in Android’s core camera handler.
Because of this, the issue isn’t specific to just the stock Android camera app. Indeed, many users have found that apps that rely on the camera including Instagram, Snapchat and Vine all experience the force-closing issue.
Trying to use the camera within any app often results in the camera immediately crashing. Owners should note that the Smart Unlock feature is also affected by this so you may have difficulty unlocking the phone in some scenarios.
For Nexus 5 owners, this may be yet another reason to avoid Android Lollipop right now. Clearly, there are some major issues on older Nexus devices. Google is traditionally good at quickly releasing Android bug fix updates so this may well be gone very soon but until then you may want to cancel that update if you use the camera on your Nexus 5 a lot.
