Apple took the world by surprise at WWDC 2011 when they announced the iCloud service for iOS devices for free. With all the other advantages that it will bring, one main attraction was the independence from iTunes in content transfer. All across the world, users of iPhones, iPod touches and iPads have been frustrated by the fact that they cannot even download the photos from their device to their computers without syncing with iTunes, something that other platforms have been able to do effortlessly. iCloud plans to change all of this, but even then, not only is it not going to be supported on all devices, it is also not here yet. So, an intermediary solution is what we’re looking for.
As always, the jailbreak community has had a lot of answers to this already, but for team pure, PhotoSync from touchbyte GmbH is a wonderful solution. This $1.99 app allows you to seamlessly download iPhone photos (also works with iPod Touch and iPad) to either a PC, Mac or another iOS device, all done wirelessly. It also supports uploading photos directly to a variety of web services like Dropbox, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa etc.
When you launch the app for the first time, you’ll be greeted by a brief introductory slide which provides some basic information about how to use the application, including setting the syncing preferences and information on the desktop client for PhotoSync. Past that, you’ll the see a main screen displaying thumbnails for every item present in your device’s Camera Roll.
A few interface items that I should clarify here. The default album for PhotoSync is Camera Roll, but hitting the back arrow button on top left will bring you to an album selection interface. The eye-shaped button in bottom left toggles between picture view mode and selection mode. The small “i” in bottom right opens the settings view, while top right red button initiates the transfer process.
Before you begin using the application, it’s nice to take a look through the settings, since you can configure various transfer protocols only there as well as modify other preferences for the transfer. It also contains a help center that can provide useful information on usage of the program.
Under Configure, you can modify the settings for various transfer targets, including your PC and other iPhone/iOS devices. For web services, this option lets you provide credentials as well as authorize your device for publishing content directly.
Tapping on Computer, for example, will let me choose further upload settings, which include picture quality as well as whether or not to allow videos in the transfer.
Let me clarify that in order for PhotoSync to download iPhone photos and videos to other iOS devices or PC, it has certain requirements. For other iPhones, iPod touches and iPads, they must be running iOS 4.0.2 or later and have PhotoSync installed as well. For PC or Mac, it requires the desktop companion application (available for download here).
Once the desktop companion is installed (I tested with Windows 7 32-bit), you get an icon in the taskbar which can be used to display the drag and drop area for photo transfer from PC to the device. For transferring photos the other way, select the images in the album interface and hit the Sync button. The first thing offered is the choice of images to be transferred.
The app will remember the iPhone photos that have already been downloaded and hence you can choose only the new ones, the selected ones or sync all irrespective of previous activity. You can also prepare your device for receiving photos and videos, which comes in handy when you want to receive them from another iOS device or from a PC through the web-browser interface.
PhotoSync works via WiFi, so all devices have to be on the same WiFi network for it to work. You can enter the network IP address of your iOS device in any web browser followed by PhotoSync’s communication port (8080 in my case) and access the upload/download interface without the need for desktop client at all. However, that is relatively inefficient and a memory hog for the iPhone.
PhotoSync provides an efficient and rather-inexpensive solution for a big dilemma of iOS devices. Once set up, it allows you to download iPhone photos to computer and offers a seamless transfer of photos and videos not only between your iPhone and PC, but also between other iOS devices as well as a variety of web services. On another note, while it frees up your iPhone’s photo transfer ability from the clutches of (evil) iTunes, it does require the Bonjour protocol to work, so if you’re on Windows, you will need to have iTunes installed.
Found PhotoSync useful? Let us know through your comments.
