New app review: Facebook Camera for iOS

Facebook has taken their IPO money and built a new app called "Facebook Camera" Ok, that's a joke.  But the app does make loading pictures to Facebook via your iPhone a better experience. 

When you first open the application, you are asked to sign in with your Facebook log in.  If you are already signed in to your Facebook account, it will ask if you would like to sign in as that same user.  You won't be asked for this information again.  If you are not signed in, you will have to sign in.  And you cannot sign in with an account that is only used for Facebook Pages.  
The next display shows all the recent photo's (yes, just photo's. No status updates) uploaded by your friends to FB with any comments or likes denoted. Along the top edge of the screen is a camera icon used for taking pictures. Also, once you take photo's with the app they will be displayed horizontally, left to right.  Tapping on one of the pictures takes you to your Camera Roll and displays all the pictures that are available to upload to FB. Each picture has a small, grayed out checkmark in the upper left hand corner.  Tapping this icon allows you to select one or multiple photos to post on your FB page. Once you've made your selection, you can tap the "selected" button and your pictures are posted to FB.


I took a picture or two with the app and the picture i choose uploaded to my Timeline immediately, then asked me for a comment.  The usual choices are available on the screen: Location, Tagging, and what privacy setting the picture should have.  This screen also allows you to add more photo's to the current post from Camera Roll.


Taking a photo with the app is pretty straight forward.  You can turn flash on, off or leave on auto.  It has "tap to focus" and the option to use the back facing camera to take a picture of yourself. 


When you take a photo the app has some editing controls.  You can crop, rotate and "tap to tag" a photo.  You can also apply one of fifteen different filters: Contrast, Cool, Light, Emerald, Copper...etc.  For this photo I applied the Coffee filter that gives it a cool brown tone.  We will probably see the Instagram features in this menu.

  
The app only works with iPhone 3GS or newer, the 4th generation iPod, iPad2, New iPad.  However there is not an iPad version.  You have to use the default iPhone/iPod version on iPad.


Reviews on iTunes vary from five star "Pretty Great" to the one star "why?" And many people are comparing it to Instagram.  


My overall impression of the app is favorable.  It's quick, has some easy to use controls to edit and posting photos is much easier.  (Yes, I hated the FB photo upload feature.)   


If you use FB a lot and love posting mobile photos, then this app is for you.