Facebook ‘Camera’ App Review

I get a bunch of news releases in my inbox everyday. 98% of the time I delete them. But I was surprised to see one from the agency repping Facebook (one of them, anyway). The release talked about its new Camera App. ‘Kate’ let me know that the new app enhances the Facebook photos mobile experience. The biggest difference between ‘Camera’ and your iPhone camera is that the new app allows you to share multiple photos at once as opposed to one by one. So if you’re a big Facebook photo contributor, this may be a good app for you.

I downloaded it and noticed it is pretty basic and just as described. You are welcomed with a basic home screen then a split screen of your camera roll and your news feed containing the last images from your friends.

The functionality is pretty slick. It’s fast. However, I took a picture of our newsroom and the app crashed. Figures. But I went back in, checked the image and clicked the post button. A dialogue box opens for tagging, location and comments. Then boom! It posts to your account. While posting, the box shrinks and hangs in mid-air until it’s complete. Pretty neat. Kind of like when you select a pic on your iPhone and choose to email it. Swoosh…neat movement (hey, it’s the small things!).

Overall, it’s a pretty basic app. It has some features to crop, rotate, and alter your images color through tints, shading, etc. But it’s clearly missing the major ‘cache of camera goodies’ Facebook received after acquiring Instagram. It’s interesting they decided to launch a camera app before ‘dressing it up to the nines’. I’m assuming an update is right around the corner.

Bottom line, you’re a big photo-poster to Facebook, you’ll want this app. If you still have a single row of images of yourself in an album from a few years ago (and a few pounds lighter), I’d say you can pass on this one, an update should be coming.