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Yes with devices implementing fully Camera2, the rule is that you can stream full resolution sensor data to buffers that you can capture and save either for processing (like HDR & superresolution) or video recording :)

At that time, was the viewfinder preview built on full sensor readout or line-skipped/binned sensor readout?

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Yes, the new API makes much more sense. I'm just surprised and a bit disappointed it took so long to come about :(. I was always disappointed by the capabilities of production phones compared to what we could do in dev, but of course, in dev we didn't have all the constraints of running alongside the rest of the OS and only using the vendor's APIs!

As for your question, I'm rusty on the details. I definitely remember binning was used for some use-cases. For viewfinder, our hardware pipeline would generate a lower-resolution stream from the full-resolution stream used for encoding.

Yes and one reason it took so much time might be the same reason why there's the risk Camera2 might stay a Nexus-only thing.

Manufacturers like keeping camera features, UI and processing exclusive to their devices, which is one thing encourages brand loyalty. The most users will rely on a favorite third party app, the more likely they might switch to another brand on their next device.

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