MobileFotos

Losing precious photos is a terrible thing. I learned that the hard way when I accidentally wiped the contents of my hard drive last year. That’s where sites like Flickr (with Flickr itself being arguably the best of them) are real life savers in this world of digital photos where hard copies are so rare. But how can the power and convenience of Flickr be harnessed on the iPhone?

MobileFotos is a kiwi-made app that has been around for as long as the App Store itself, so this is by no means a review of a new product, but a reminder of another great locally-developed app that really does deserve a place on your device.

Familiar menu

Once you have authorised your Flickr account on the app, you are launched into a very familiar environment that uses the native iPhone colours and menu structures to allow you to navigate around your Flickr account. Access is given to your photostream, sets, contacts, groups, favourites and tags. Navigating your photos themselves uses an almost identical interface to the Photos app that comes built in to your iPhone. Thumbnails are displayed in a grid which can be fluidly flicked through and then tapped to bring up full screen. Once full-screen, the usual pinch-to-zoom and panning methods you’d expect are employed.

Sets menu

Sadly, there is no option to load the original-size file through MobileFotos, so those wanting to see their pictures in intricate detail may be disappointed. There is an ‘open in Safari’ button where you can open the full-size image in Safari but this removes you from the app so the experience is compromised somewhat. For the most case, however, the detail level within the app is just fine for viewing on the screen of your phone. Options exist to download the photo you’re viewing to your camera roll, assign it to a contact or to share it via email.

The app takes advantage of the iPhone’s feature-set by allowing you to find pictures that have been taken at or near your current physical location, plus the ability to upload photos and videos (for the 3GS) from your phone to your Flickr account. This is a really neat feature and makes sharing photos while you’re on vacation or just wirelessly backing them up a cakewalk. For backing up, you can set the app to automatically upload your photos to Flickr for you whenever you start the app with fresh pictures on your camera roll. You can specify whether it does tha always, only over wifi, or never.

Nearby photos

Local developers XK72 are quick to point out in their app and on their site that while the app uses Flickr APIs it is not endorsed by Flickr, and I think Yahoo! (the owners of Flickr) have really missed a trick here by not releasing an official Flickr app. However that lack of foresight is a bonus for XK72 who have created here the next best thing. At $4.19 it’s on the pricier side of apps like this but it is money well spent. Highly recommended.

Tags: 2G, 3G, 3GS, flickr, NZ App Store Essentials, photos
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