Dropbox's Auto Camera Upload for iOS is Cool, But Flawed
Dropbox is good at being an iDisk alternative, and it just got better with version 1.5.1. The new version allows iPod, iPad, and iPod Touch users to automatically upload Camera Roll content to Dropbox’ “Camera Upload” folder. All you need is to activate it in the
app’s “Settings” panel. If you worry about data plan consumption while on mobile internet, you can turn off “Use Celluar Data” to make sure that uploading happens only when you’re on online pharmacy no prescription wi-fi. As a bonus Dropbox also adds extra 3GB storage just for using the function.
It’s like a better alternative to Photo Stream, as it also allows you to upload videos stored on your Camera Roll whereas iCloud’s offering can’t do movies yet. I really think Dropbox is on the right direction with this, but there’s a big problem. Although the uploads can be done as a background process, iOS 5 will shut the application eventually, and you have to open Dropbox again to resume. A pop up notification will appear, but opening Dropbox every now and then is a hassle. This is not an issue with Dropbox, but with iOS 5′s automatically shutting multi tasking apps that are not in use .
So unless Apple allows a third party App to be always active in the background (in iOS 7 perhaps) you have to live with activating the app every now and then specially when uploading huge files.
One Comment to “Dropbox's Auto Camera Upload for iOS is Cool, But Flawed”
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I found that iOS will only cancel the uploads when the lockscreen comes on. I’m unsure about whether it cancels it when another program is in the foreground (ie, Dropbox is in the bar of recently opened programs, but you’re doing other things).
A tip to avoid having to constantly restart Dropbox is to turn off the autolock (I will also turn down the brightness at this point to conserve the battery). This seems to prevent iOS from shutting down the program in the middle of uploading.
It would be really convenient if you could upload your photos automatically to Dropbox, whether the proram was open or not. In the meantime, it looks like users need to manually control “automatic” uploads, which isn’t very automatic at all.