Annoying shutter noise in Android camera

When I first got my Android phone a few months ago, there was an option to turn off the annoying click noise that happened when you took a picture with the camera.

With some recent updates to Donut from Cupcake (or maybe even some backported Eclair updates in the Cyanogen rooted mod—not sure), that option has somehow disappeared from the camera settings. Frustrating. The only thing worse than lacking basic functionality in an interface is taking away fuctionality that had previously been there.

I did quite a bit of Google searching to find out if anyone else had this problem. Basically most people either didn’t have the problem or had no solution to it. One person suggested an app called Snap Photo. I installed the app, saw there was an option to disable the clicking shutter noise, but the noise was still there even when I selected that option. Another person suggested turning off the phone volume, taking the picture, and then turning the volume back up. An effective workaround but quite a bit of hassle, don’t you think?

After browsing through quite a few options in the Android Market, I finally stumbled upon an app called simply Sound Manager. It was perfect. It allows you to fine-tune the volume so you can keep the ringer, media, and other volumes at normal levels and then turn off the system volume, which is responsible for that annoying click noise. There you have it: Sound Manager.