Flickr issued a significant update to its mobile apps for iOS and Android on Thursday, April 17. The new app is easier to use, faster, and offers many new features.
Ever since Marissa Mayer took the reins at Yahoo, she's been working on improving Flickr to make it competitive with other popular photo-sharing apps like Instagram. The latest update to the Flickr mobile app for iOS and Android is a huge step toward making Flickr more relevant in the mobile photo app space.
The new app features a cleaner, simpler design that offers access to all the app's features in a sidebar available on the opening page. The app's overall aesthetic is greatly improved. Previous versions of the app looked more like the website squeezed down into app form. The new version actually looks like a mobile app and can be used as such.
The photos are viewable in a single scroll and simply by tapping on one, you can see the size of the photo. Once you've selected a photo, you can tap on a button to see all the details about the picture, including what type of camera took the shot, when, and where the shot was captured.
The new version adds Google+ and Dropbox backup, more editing options, and live video capture. Users can now edit images with 14 different filters, make adjustments and crop photos right in the app. Flickr also made it faster to upload high-resolution photos. It now takes just 30 seconds to upload high-definition videos, too.
For the most part, the redesign places emphasis on the social aspect of Flickr photo sharing. The new app has easy-to-use tools that allow the user to share photos on social networks, comment on them and like them on Flickr. The app also lets users set Flickr as their default photo uploader, so that all the photos taken go directly to Flickr. Flickr offers an impressive 1TB of free storage to its users, so it's a good option for keeping your photos safe.
Ever since its creation, Flickr has been popular with photography lovers, attracting 100 billion photo uploads by 100 million people. Still, in recent years Flickr has struggled to stay relevant in a world dominated by mobile and social networks. This most recent app redesign is an important step forward for Flickr.
