Why does an image captured using camera intent gets rotated on some devices on Android?

Most phone cameras are landscape, meaning if you take the photo in portrait, the resulting photos will be rotated 90 degrees. In this case, the camera software should populate the Exif data with the orientation that the photo should be viewed in.

Note that the below solution depends on the camera software/device manufacturer populating the Exif data, so it will work in most cases, but it is not a 100% reliable solution.

ExifInterface ei = new ExifInterface(photoPath);
int orientation = ei.getAttributeInt(ExifInterface.TAG_ORIENTATION,
                                     ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_UNDEFINED);

Bitmap rotatedBitmap = null;
switch(orientation) {

    case ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_ROTATE_90:
        rotatedBitmap = rotateImage(bitmap, 90);
        break;

    case ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_ROTATE_180:
        rotatedBitmap = rotateImage(bitmap, 180);
        break;

    case ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_ROTATE_270:
        rotatedBitmap = rotateImage(bitmap, 270);
        break;

    case ExifInterface.ORIENTATION_NORMAL:
    default:
        rotatedBitmap = bitmap;
}

Here is the rotateImage method:

public static Bitmap rotateImage(Bitmap source, float angle) {
    Matrix matrix = new Matrix();
    matrix.postRotate(angle);
    return Bitmap.createBitmap(source, 0, 0, source.getWidth(), source.getHeight(),
                               matrix, true);
}