Facebook Camera is a brand new image sharing app from Facebook. Whether or not the app itself has any relation to their recent purchase of Instagram is unknown to me but all I can say is it does share a lot of similarities. I can also say that this app blows the pants out of using the default Facebook app to upload and share photos. Unlike the regular Facebook app, Facebook Camera is strictly for photos meaning you will only be able to view photos that your friends upload in your feed. What else is new is that you will now be able to upload multiple photos at once as well as add filters to your images, making the whole experience very Instagram-like.
As you know, uploading photos on the Facebook app can be a bit painful. It’s slow and the overall bugginess of the FB app makes it very inconvenient at times. This new app hopes to remedy this and make photo sharing more of a joy than a hassle. Taking some cues from Instagram, the main feed only shows photos and the status attached to those photos. You can click the thumbs up button to like the photo and the little chat bubble to comment on the photo. I dare say the interface is a bit better than that on Instagram as commenting on an image doesn’t really take you to a new screen. Instead, the dialog bubble pops up with the feed darkened in the background. It’s really nice looking and keeps you from losing your place. There’s even a really simple way to view either your own feed or your friend feed with a click of a button. Did I mention that this app is fast?
Up top, you’ll see a little camera icon as well as 3 of your most recent images taken on your camera roll. I really like this and it helps speed up the whole process of uploading. Usually you just want to upload the most recent image anyways and this makes it so simple. Just click on the image thumbnail and it goes straight to the editing screen where you can crop as well as add effects. When you’re done, click the status icon to type your description for the image as well as who you want to tag in it, location tag, and the privacy settings for it.
Some people might be wondering why they would need a separate app to upload aand view images when the FB app does the same. Well my answer to that is that Facebook Camera is just loads faster than the FB app and less frustrating to use. Plus, most people I think use Facebook to view images anyways and don’t necessarily want all the extra fluff that is in the regular FB app. I know that I’ll be using this app way more than the standard FB app despite the fact that you will not be able to insert images into albums or even create albums as they all go into the default mobile uploads folder. Hopefully they’ll integrate that into future builds.
Facebook Camera is available right now in the App Store for Free. It is compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (4th generation), iPad 2 Wi-Fi, iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G, iPad (3rd generation) and iPad Wi-Fi + 4G.Requires iOS 4.0 or later.
[via App Store]Description
Share your photos in a snap with Facebook Camera. Post a bunch of photos to Facebook at once, and see what friends are up to with a feed of nothing but their photos.
– Post multiple photos from your camera roll at a time
– Crop and apply filters to give your photos a new look
– Scroll down a single feed of all your friends’ photos
– Tag your friends, add photo captions and say where you are
– See photos from the different apps your friends use
