Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

Camera Genius
Version 2.0

Bottom Line: Once the best camera replacement app available, others have now surpassed it in features. Still a very good camera.

Camera Genius

Camera Genius by CodeGoo hit version 2.0 this week. Overall, Camera Genius has been a solid app for me, this update included. The version 2.0 update adds video for iPhone 2G and 3G. Unfortunately, I think Camera Genius has been leapfrogged by ProCamera and Camera Plus Pro in terms of functionality, features, power and usability. It’s still a very good app and it does many things well. If it’s your camera app of choice, you’ll be pleased with this update. But despite its features, it now lags behind other camera apps currently available.

What I think of Camera Genius’ big new feature, video for all iPhones, is below. Read on.

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We recently reviewed the free app Camera Plus by Global Delight and named it as one of the best free iPhone camera replacement apps. Hopefully, you like the free app so much, you buy Camera Plus Pro with several additional features. If you’ve been on the fence about buying the app, consider that one very cool new feature in the next major upgrade is video for all iPhones, including older ones. And from a sample clip released this week, it looks like the quality of that video is pretty decent for a phone cam.

Here’s a clip from Global Delight’s YouTube Channel, taken recently, showing the video capabilities of the beta:

As the clip shows, the video is smooth and the frame rate seems better than most of the 3rd-party video recording apps currently available. It appears to offer those with older iPhones a superior alternative if they want to record video on those devices. Glyn Evans on iPhoneography.com recently wrote an excellent article, “Shooting Video on the iPhone 2G/3G.” In it, he notes that nearly all of the currently available video recorders for older, non-3GS iPhones record at 15 frames-per-second or lower, which means that the picture will look choppy when played back. It looks to me like Camera Plus Pro 2.0 will have video of at least that, possibly higher. To my eye, the playback of the beta clip was smoother than any of the other alternatives currently available.

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