Last week flickr announced that they were releasing an application for Android devices.
I use two devices a Tablet from Asus and a phone from Samsung. So I went to both devices and decided to install the app and see what it had to offer. I also wanted to compare it to the tools I was using on these devices to access flickr.com (a web browser and flickroid). Unfortunately the official apps is only available on phone devices and not on tablets.
So let's try to define my needs when I'm using a mobile device like a tablet or a phone and access flickr :
- Be able to post, tag and file pictures in my sets and groups
- Read/reply to comments made on pictures
- See my stats
And the importance is in that order, exactly in that order. I really can wait to be front of a computer to see my stats. I prefer to use my computer to reply to comments, see other's pictures, fav pictures and comments on pictures (and I use a bunch of extensions to make those experience better at least on my desktop).
Flickroid
is more a small utility that plug itself into Android and adds flickr share buttons proposed and used by other apps. Exporting photos to flickr with it is a nice experience. You can tag, file the pictures into your sets or even create sets. It works nicely over wifi and 2g/3g. When upload fails you can retry the uploads and all the metadata that you added on the initial upload try are kept.
Flickroid has two flows that I can list :
- It's painfull to upload more than one image at a time which is what Roland does
- It remembers your tags from one photo to the other and editing tags on the phone or tablet isn't the best experience.
For all my other needs, I will use the browser (except for organizr which doesn't support tap events)
Flickr's official application
Let's me do plenty more things, like read comments easily consume my friends images. I can consume way more with it - comments are made easy.
Pros:
- Favoring is easy too.
- The UI is nice and really made to have the full flickr on the small screen.
- The application let's me use the camera from my device and upload it ( I can even add some filters to have nice effects on the pictures).
- When the image is geotagged and you are willing to share that, tags based on the location are automatically added.
Cons:
- I can't add my pictures to sets
- Without wifi uploading fails - this might be fixed by the new version that got published today.
- Failed uploads are not easily re-try-able - you need to re-enter all the metadata - if it's available in the application - I didn't find where it was.
- Consuming photos is easier on tablets with bigger screen than phone and the app isn't present on the tablet android market.
So overall I like both for different usage. In an ideal world I would use flickroid on my phone to create content. And I would use the official flickr application on my tablet to comment and interact with my photographic social graph. For now I use my phone more than my tablet so I will stick with flickroid.