[Q] Proprietary "something" in camera app topic

Hi everyone,
I am having a Oneplus One and I put Mahdi on it yesterday. Everything's great, but I have the feeling the camera has a lower quality. I read about another phone which had this fixed once via update by using proprietary... And here, my memory lacks. So, is it a proprietary format or driver or something? I just remember some other phone had an update and it really improved the camera quality. (Was a news on a tech news side I frequent when I'm bored.)

So, right now, I am wondering if someone knew what that proprietary 'something' was and if it is possible that Mahdi suffers the same draw back and if there are some Camera Apps out there (best in PlayStore), that already feature those proprietary 'something'...

Also, I am kind of wondering if I suffer of confirmation bias, because I kind of expected the camera quality to impair. Well, in any case, I realise that a little more information about the topic would be helpful, but since camera and quality is such a huge topic, I am already greatful if someone can kind of give some google keywords of things that can cause differences in quality when using the same hardware.

-TheCommoner