Touchwiz and Samsung Cameras and photo quality

Question

This post by cgirerd, on XDA says,

All the custom ROMs out there that are not Touchwiz-based don't use the stock camera (and the stock camera can't be installed on them). So, by using ROMs such as Lineage OS, Resurrection Remix OS, crDroid, AOSP and so on, you will get lower quality than on Touchwiz-based ROMs such as SuperMan-ROM, BatMan-ROM, IronMan-ROM.

As a programmer, I'm not sure what that means but I'm inclined to think there may be some truth to it or he knows what he's talking about.

When cgirerd says "stock camera" is he referring to the stock camera application, or the stock camera firmware/drivers for the ROM? I have an Samsung S5, and I use LineagOS and I've never noticed even a slight degradation in camera quality; but, I'm also of the mindset that the world we be a better place if phone didn't have cameras and almost never use my own.

Is there any truth to that post by cgirerd?

Answer 1

I believe modern Samsung Phones use a proprietary camera app called Samsung Camera which requires TouchWiz API extensions. You can see those extensions documented on Samsung's site,

Camera SDK provides enhanced features and APIs available to users for developing enriched camera-based applications. This SDK offers additional functionalities and capabilities on top of existing Android Camera API2 capabilities. The Camera application interface utilizes the Android Camera APIs. Camera SDK also provides easy-to-use, fast performing APIs for new image processing and computational photography needs.

While it utilizes the default interface, there are SDK-specific capabilities, without which you'll be losing functionality in AOSP roms. I believe the API uses TouchWiz blobs internally.

I can not find those API extensions (proprietary and missing from AOSP) documented anywhere, but they're explained by a commenter here.

(feel free to answer here with more information and I'll delete this answer).