Both 10X Camera Tools and 10X Camera Tools Pro recently received minor updates. When they were first released a year ago, not only did they add a ton of functionality to the iPhone 2G and 3G camera, but the user interface revolutionized iPhone camera replacements. 10X was the first good camera app I found with a flyaway onscreen display.
Unfortunately, the 10X apps are late to the iOS 4 game and the new updates add iOS 4 functionality, but still do not take advantage of the features of the iPhone 4.
10X Camera Tools Pro is their full-featured camera app and it has some really nice features for any iPhone other than a 4.
10X Camera Tools is the lower priced, less featured version of the two apps. See my story on iPhone camera replacement apps — the 10X cameras have many of these features.
The new update to 10X Camera Tools Pro has some great features for older iPhones, including built-in zoom, rule of thirds composition grid, big button full screen shutter, audible self-timer, the ability to add photo notes, several smart shooting modes which adjust the color to the image, and many other features.
The flyaway onscreen display blew me away the first time I saw it. Here was an app that had tons of features and controls in the viewfinder and they could all be set then easily hidden out of site for shooting. At the time, iPhone camera apps either cluttered the screen or forced you to dig through a settings screen to change these settings.
One advantage to both 10X apps is that they still work on any iPhone running iOS 3.1 or newer, as well as the new iPod touch 4th Gen.
But both apps have lagged behind other premier camera apps since the iPhone 4 was released back in June. It’s only been with these recent updates — released several months after the 4 and two major iOS 4 updates — that the iPhone 4 shutter bug was fixed in the apps. The two apps still don’t support the 5 MP resolution of the iPhone 4. There’s no support for a front camera. There’s no way to set the hardware flash on an iPhone 4. Although the descriptions not that the apps support the 3.2 MP resolution of the iPhone 3GS, due to a bug in the software, both 10X Camera Tools apps only go up to 1600×1200 2 MP resolution on an iPhone 4. The geo-tagging feature for iPhone 4 was supposed to have been fixed in this latest update, but I’m still not able to get it to work. Trying to import an image from the camera roll to add notes works fine in older iPhones but only freezes up the app on my iPhone 4.
Both 10X Camera Tools apps were awesome when they were released. When it was free, 10XCamera Tools even made my first list of the best free iPhone camera replacement apps. But, perusing the developer’s support website, there’s little mention of the apps and it looks like the 10X camera apps are no longer a high development priority for Reallusion.
App Store links: 10X Camera Tools Pro | 10X Camera Tools
=M=
~~~~
