The developer had a hard time reaching the shutter button or the volume key. So he made oSnap. An app that lets you take a picture by tapping anywhere. Of course, anywhere is an ambiguous term. Anywhere doesn’t mean from the homescreen or the lockscreen. Anywhere from inside the app. So you’ll still have to hustle your way through the homescreen and launch the app first. Open the app and you see your three latest snaps up above. No tapping the tiny gallery icon for you. Want to see more than just three? Swipe down from the grid to reveal your entire gallery. Below the grid lies your camera. As you can see, there are no buttons. No shutter key, no settings to adjust, no HDR mode to enable.
Tap once on the camera preview to tap a pic (in the stock app, tapping once just refocuses).Swipe up or down (or shake) to switch between the rear or front camera.Swipe left or right to turn flash on or off.Tap and hold to focus.
That’s it. From the gallery, tap on any image to open it and you’ll see sharing options at the bottom. You’ve got one tap sharing to Facebook, Twitter, Message, Email and Instagram on top of iOS 7’s default sharing menu. The sharing features are one of the best features of this app.
The Best Use Case Scenario
oSnap calls itself the “Selfie Camera”. I don’t take selfies but the argument is totally valid. All the things you need in a selfie cam, are here. It is fast, so keep tapping till you get your “perfect shot”. Also, you can see your three most recent selfies right on top. That’s got to be helpful.
The same features are useful if you are more into you-ies ( what Tom Haverford from Parks and Recreation calls “selfies of other people”).
Problem You Say?
The app is fast, works great for selfies and thanks to iPhone’s capable hardware, takes great photos. I’m not even upset by a lack of filters or editing options because I know that’s not what this app is for. But there are a few things in the app that are fundamentally wrong which I need to address here. Hopefully the developer will make it better with upcoming updates.
Landscape Maybe?
Try turning your phone to landscape mode and nothing happens. UI does not change, the gestures do not alter and most of all, the pictures taken in landscape mode show up flipped in the preview. I’m sure some people like to take selfies in landscape mode, you know, covering that entire fancy bathroom mirror or the gorgeous waterfall behind them.
Squishy Previews
As you might have noticed from the screenshots above, the preview images in gallery are all squishy, instead of a squared previews like in other apps.
For All It’s Worth
oSnap sells for a cent less than a dollar. And is totally worth it if you are in the same boat as the developer, frustrated with the overly complicated, feature-rich apps that land every other week on the App Store’s featured section. But the app comes with its own set of (minimal) baggage, as described above. Give it a try.
