Flickrfor Android

Flickr’s reputation grew because of its storage capacity and the community-feel it gave to anyone with a passion for photography. A few updates later, the app has taken a step back from the easy to use photo viewer that it used to be.

Neglecting the basics

Popular among professionals and amateurs, the photographers’ dream app, Flickr, has started to disappoint.

Flickr still has some appeal in its clean interface that helps users get where they need to go. The app offers the function to view and store images and, in theory, it does this effectively. It has some useful features for finding photos, such as image recognition, where it attempts to understand what a photo is of, and can find similar subject categories.

The image hosting service has lost many of its intuitive features, which makes the experience of using the app frustrating. The main issue is that it is now difficult to upload photos from the camera, and some photos don’t upload at all. If you have thousands of images stored on Flickr, the disappearance of the timeline feature is more than a minor annoyance. It is no longer possible to find anything you’ve snapped by date. Yes, you have to manually scroll to find what you’re looking for.

The navigation to search for photos is flawed, once you click on an image and go back, you will be taken to the start of the list, which makes everything take a lot longer. When you combine these flaws, it means extra time spent on the app, and if you are using data rather than WiFi, it can really zap your allowance.

Where can you run this program?

Requires Android 4.4 or above. It’s also available on iOS.

Is there a better alternative?

Yes. You can try Imgur or Google Photos for your photo storage needs. They outperform Flickr in many ways.

Our take

Flickr still has some good points but seems to have lost its way when it comes to usability. A few tweaks here and there might bring it back to its former glory, but for now you’ll have to wait.

Should you download it?

No. If you want to upload and search for photos without any hassle, this isn’t the app for you.