500px – Explore & Discover amazing photography in this Android App
by Paul Wilks
May 10, 2012 10:56 AM –
Install
500px is an exploring, photo-discovery and social platform for showcasing the very best pictures you have taken. Featuring a rich user interface, intuitive search functionality and lush photo viewer, 500px is the app for people who take photography seriously. The 500px app is essentially a mobile client for the main website, but offers a number of handy features for exploring inspiring photography on the go.
Price: Free App, $19.95 & $49.95 annual membership upload more than 10 photos per week
Tested on: HTC One X
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Amazing photographs!
- Like, share, comment, browse and favourite!
- Great searching tools!
Cons
- Overly reliant on the main website for profile creation.
- Very limited uploads unless you pay.
- Can’t upload from app itself.
- Very small icons which aren’t great on a phone.
- Has multiple problems in loading pictures, often leaving just a blank loading screen.
Features:
500px is a service for the very best photography, providing an impressive showcase on some dazzling and breath-taking pictures… it’s miles away from grainy Instagram snaps of Starbucks cups. Users upload their pictures through the website and become easy to discover in the app itself. It would have been far more intuitive to allow users to upload from the app and this is actually a big let-down, although I might guess they prefer ‘proper’ photographs over camera phone snaps.
While the pictures loaded are genuinely superb, it’s also easy to find them with the fantastic search and browsing tools available to you in the app. There is a basic search-bar function, but you can also check out Popular, Editor’s favourites, Upcoming and Fresh. This are all great for exploring and finding a wide range of cool pictures of great variety.
Like any social forum you can comment, like, favourite and share. Your favourites are collated in your own Favourites section, so you can save the ones you like the most in one place.
You can, of course upload your own photographs but unlike practically every other photo-sharing platform you can only do this via the website itself. Additionally, you can only upload a set number of images for free (10 per week)- more than this and you have to pay for ‘Plus’ or ‘Awesome’ membership. These aren’t inexpensive either, costing an annual fee of $19.95 and $49.95 respectively. Like I said before, it’s for people who really do take their pictures seriously.
The user interface is very polished and not a million miles away from apps like Lightbox Photos. 500px suffers though from poor design in places; the icons are incredibly small, and loading pictures is often problematic; I frequently found images wouldn’t load properly, just presenting a series of black loading screens- see the gallery below for an example.
All-in-all I think it’s fair to say that 500px is a superb idea, with great content and is great for finding incredibly and awe-inspiring photographs. However, with it often seems at odds with a mobile interface and this is reflected in an underwhelming app. It has lots of promise, but I think they are aiming for a far more exclusive market than many Android users would want to invest in; limitation of free usage and premium subscription fees assert this clearly.
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500px – Popular
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500px – Upcoming
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500px – Search features
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500px – Fresh
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500px – Often suffers with loading delay
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500px – Picture view
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500px – Picture view with menu
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500px – Favourites
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500px – You
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500px – View comments
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500px – Post comment
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500px – Requires you to complete profile via web
Usefulness:
If I was reviewing the whole service, I’d say 500px is a great for uploading, browsing and sharing great photography from around the world. However, as this a review of the app- which is very limited (even your profile has to be completed on the website rather than within the app before you can like, comment, etc.) this really cannot be said. The app lets you browse pictures and share them on Facebook and Twitter, which then only posts a link to the 500px website. Could be so much more, but this limitation stifles the apps potential hugely.
Ease of Use:
The app would be easier to use if it wasn’t for the tiny icons and the fact the pictures often do not load properly in the first place. Additionally, because using the app relies wholly on your registering, completing your profile and uploading through the website, the whole experience feels very user-unfriendly and restrictive.
Frequently Used:
Pictures are refreshed regularly and you can check out the Fresh section for the latest submissions. It’s not unthinkable that you would use the app regularly, but if you were committed to using the service, it makes far more sense to just do so via the web.
Interface:
The interface looks great but isn’t particularly user-friendly with small icons and unresponsive picture loading. For all the grief Instagram gets, at least it can load its content properly.