With Internet heading down the social networking lane, it seemed odd that the most popular photo sharing service across the web didn’t have an app for the iPhone all this while. All the more so when iPhone has been the top contributor to Flickr’s ever growing image database for the past two years. The wait it over folks! Yahoo! filled the void by introducing the long awaited Flickr app for iPhone. Flaunting a slick interface, the app sticks to its core task without fooling around.

A Fresh New Feel

The app has a fresh new feel to it that can be attributed to the use of white and black color scheme rather than the standard blue and black that we all have grown accustomed to. The app uses one-time authorization process requiring a short visit to Safari and you’re good to go. The home screen is adorned by images looped through a slideshow and are flanked by navigation options above and below them. The Search toolbar lets you dig up images and videos from all around Flickr or from your contacts or your own photostream. The Recent, You and Contacts buttons at bottom stick to their name with ‘Recent’ providing recent activity from your friends and family, ‘You’ focusing on your photostream, sets,tags and favorite images while Contacts is self-explanatory. Link to images can be mailed using the in-app email facility.

Upload Effortlessly

A small camera icon at the top lets you upload photos to your Flickr account effortlessly. Images can be selected from the Library or clicked on the spot from within the app. Apart from the usual ‘Title’ and ‘Description’ fields, the app lets you assign the image to an existing set or create a new one if you wish. Tags too can either be selected from previously used tags or be new ones can be added right away. Sadly, there isn’t a way to add the photo to a group. Geo-tagging is a bit icky with app offering to add your current location to existing non-geotagged images that pretty much kills the whole idea of geo-tagging. You can set the privacy level of the image to restrict accessibility to friends and family or keep the image private.

Winner Despite Limitations

So much for the good part, let me get you through the app limitations quickly. Images uploaded to your Flickr account are downscaled to a resolution of 800 x 600px, half the original resolution of the iPhone 3G’s camera. EXIF data doesn’t get transferred and neither does the device with which the image is shot i.e. iPhone in this case . There isn’t a way to zoom in to an image by pinching or tapping but landscape mode for photo viewing is supported. There isn’t a way to delete pictures from your account or modify their title, description etc. The app imposes restriction on emailing link of only one image at a time and images can’t be saved to camera roll but I’m guessing that is mainly because of copyright issues. Apart from the these, my major gripe with the app was its slowness that made it look more like a web-app than a native one.

I hope the ability to tweet link to images along with other social networking features are added in future. Apps such as ‘Reflections’ and ‘Darkslide’ can upload images to Flickr at full resolution while others such as ‘Mobile Photos’ are equipped to handle multiple Flickr accounts. There’s even the gorgeous free Flickit. Flickr app beats them all in the UI department but has some catching up to do on the features front. Flickr app comes free of charge and can be downloaded from the App Store right away. Flickr app is a classic 1.0 app having its share of bugs and a limited feature set, but it has a bright future ahead having begun the journey on a bright note.