camera firmware problems

[kqlnut]

Any updates?

Yes, I heard back from Martijn who told me that there are different autofocus firmwares out there and that it was a bit of trial and error to find one that worked for the PinePhone's sensor. So it's possible that slightly different sensors are used in different PinePhone's and some may expect a different firmware. So the next step would be finding and trying out other auto focus firmwares.
He also confirmed that this is not a timeout issue, the firmware should start within 10 ms.

If you have time, maybe you could add some error checking there, recompile the kernel, and check the results?

I might have some time in the next days to get into this and also find and learn how to make available different firmwares since that's probably the most promising direction.