Flickr Finally Gets an iPhone App

[Michael Essany]

Image via Tech Crunch

It seems Flickr is finally getting with the program. The hugely popular online photo sharing service is at long last debuting its own official iPhone app. And Tech Crunch has the scoop this morning on a development that should make a lot of photo-crazy iPhone users particularly jolly.

"iPhone is the most popular camera on Flickr, but Flickr (Flickr) hasn’t really returned the love to iPhone users…until now. Because, you know, having your website optimized for the iPhone is one thing, and having a full fledged, native application for the platform is another. The official Flickr iPhone app is finally here and it enables you to easily share the photos you’ve captured with iPhone’s camera, geo-tag them, and add them to sets."

I am pleasantly surprised to report a positive first experience myself with the free app, which enables all the neat features, comment and search options that similarly make Flickr itself such a successful service. The Yahoo owned Flickr, which works on both iPhone and iPod Touch devices, also allows for naming and tagging new photos as well as assigning them to relevant sets and determining the permissions.

There has been no shortage of third-party applications that used Flickr’s pictures, but this app matches the look and feel of Flickr proper much more closely than any of them. Individual photo pages look great and commenting is easy... The main page search functionality works well, and thumbnails are populated quickly. If you click on a photo, you can also go to a larger version loaded in a different screen that allows you to swipe left and right to move between images. It does not look like pinch to zoom works, however.

If there are any immediate critiques it would be an apparent lack of social networking opportunities, particularly when it comes to pushing out images to Twitter, as Tech Crunch openly acknowledges. Otherwise, the functionality is terrific for an app that is long overdue.

Incredibly, according to Flickr’s Camera Finder graphs, the iPhone, even with its "weak 2 MP camera and its lack of zoom" has surpassed the mighty Canon Rebel XTi as the #1 camera on Flickr. The new app is sure to put the nails in the coffin for any comeback Canon may have had in mind.

[MHmagic77]

Bout time Flickr!!!

[emac2299]

Flick my Bick !! Yeay

[roeiboot]

yea, about friggin' time :}

[rwin84]

Acquiring now

[thu6]

really well done. i love it.

[cWanja89]

May want to add the fact that the 3G has the 2MP and the 3Gs has the 3MP (with auto-focus)

[A_DuB187]

It's about time. You're WAY late to the game there Flickr but I'm sure glad you made it.

[rwin84]

itunes not showing it

[NoValidTitle]

Crashes on me as soon as I load a pic from my camera roll on the phone.


edit*

I rebooted the phone and it seemed to help, could use a few improvements. Currently you have to add your tags to each individual photo you upload. Also no batch uploading at this point.

[n00neimp0rtant]

Not a huge fan of the service, considering Facebook's photos function is a lot more fun =D

[Frostbite]

Wow, at this point I had almost given up hope, littlw late folks.

[ihaveabu]

Sweet! Finally!!!!!

[BenzoHartt]

great news! Can't wait to give it a spin!

[Darkhunter130]

Just tried it out.

Its awesome! Finally no more mobile fotos.

[Cer0]

I read elsewhere that it downgrades the quality. Can someone confirm this please? I don't use Flickr much but if it downgrades I will probably not worry about it yet.

[Darkhunter130]

I read elsewhere that it downgrades the quality. Can someone confirm this please? I don't use Flickr much but if it downgrades I will probably not worry about it yet.

I love flickr, the quality is better then photobucket imo.

Here are some pics that were taken on my iphone and uploaded with the new flickr app.

[Cer0]

Is the quality as good as it would be if importing from iPhone to iPhoto then up to Flickr?

Sorry at work and can't see images that are posted on "social" sites

[Darkhunter130]

I couldn't say for sure as I dont have iphoto but I can't see how it gets any better then what I posted here. It looks as good as it does on the phone itself.

[mdc929]

worth a try i guess