Carousel is an innovative media viewer for Dropbox
Yesterday's release of Mailbox for Android was not the only announcement that Dropbox made on that day. The company revealed another app on the same day, and it too was released as a free standalone application for the Android operating system.
Carousel is a new app by Mailbox creator Gentry Underwood which has been released for Android and iOS yesterday.
It allows you to browse your media collection that is hosted on Dropbox in a new comfortable way, to manage all these photos, and to share some or all of them effortlessly.
The review uses the Android version exclusively but from what I can tell, works identical on iOS.
Once you have installed Carousel on your device, you are required to connect it to your Dropbox account. If the account is already set up on Android, Carousel offers to automatically connected to it. You can however select a different account as well if you prefer that.
The main screen displays all photos and videos sorted by date and a time bar at the bottom of the screen. You can navigate either by swiping up or down to scroll between dates, or use the time bar at the bottom for larger jumps.
The process is fluent and there is virtually no delay when you are using either feature to browse your media collection.
One of the core features of Carousel is the apps' sharing feature. You can long tap on a photo or video to add it to the sharing queue or tap on the share button displayed next to a date to add multiple media files to it immediately.
You can then go through your collection to add other photos or videos before you click on the share link to use Android's sharing options to share them to friends, contacts, or services.
A single tap on a photo displays a larger version of it on the device. You can pinch zoom here, or scroll up to add it to the sharing queue, or down to hide the photo from your gallery. A swipe to the left or right on the other hand loads the previous or next photo in the queue.
Shared photos are always shared as links pointing to the Carousel website. When you follow that link, you see information about the person who shared the data with you, how many photos were shared, when they were shared, and a download button.
Individual photos are downloaded in their native format, while picture collections as zip files instead.
Carousel supports private conversations as well, which become available as soon as you start sharing with friends.
Criticism
The app displays all Dropbox photos in its interface with no option to have it display only local photos or only camera upload photos.
While you can hide photos, it has to be done individually for each photo which can be quite bothersome depending on the number of photos that you want hidden.
There are also no options to group photos in a different way. You cannot create albums for example or create custom picture groups using pictures taken on different days.
Last but not least, there is also no option to name pictures or groups. Carousel uses location-based information exclusively to name them, and there is no option to add custom names.
Verdict
Dropbox has a media viewer which may be sufficient if all you want to do is view photos or videos using the Dropbox app or share it. What Carousel adds to the table is better management of all photos stored on Dropbox.
If you take lots of photos and videos using your phone, then you will benefit the most from the features that Carousel offers, especially if you share photos regularly with friends.
Thanks for the tip Martin.
It is for these kinds of posts that I follow GHacks.
What’s up with the generic comment, are you a bot?
2G?
Where on the planet is that still in use? I was forced to give up using my RAZRV3 years ago because 2G was phased out by AT&T.
Everywhere 3G has been turned off and you don’t have LTE coverage, and believe me there are many developed countries where this is the case and if it weren’t for 2G you wouldn’t even be able to make a phone call.
Maybe I missed it, but I don’t believe tha term “2G” is in the article. Perhaps you are referring to “AGM G2”??
@Martin
Your website has gone insane.
When I the post button I then saw my comment posted on a different article page. When I opened this article again, it is here.
@Tachy @Martin Brinkmann
” Your website has gone insane. ”
Same here. Has happened several times.
@Tachy,
@Martin P.,
For over two weeks now,
I’ve been seeing “Comments” posted by subscribers appearing in different, unrelated articles.
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572991
https://www.ghacks.net/windows-11-update-stuck-fixed-for-good/#comment-4572951
For the time being,
it would be better to specify the “article name and URL” at the beginning of the post.
@tachy a lot of non-phone devices with a sim in them rely on 2G, at least here in europe.
Usually things reporting usage or errors/alarms on something remote that does not get day to day inspection in person. They are out there in vast numbers doing important work. Reliable, good range. The low datarate is no problem at all in those cases.
3G is gone or on its last legs everywhere, but this stuff still has too much use to cancel.
Anyhow, interesting that they would put that in. I can see the point if you suspect a hostile 2G environment (amateur eavesdroppers with laptop, ranging up to professional grade MITM fake towers while “strangely” not getting the stronger crypto voip 4G because it is being jammed, and back down to something as old ‘stingray’ devices fallen into the wrong hands).
But does this also mean that they have handled and rolled out a fix for that nasty 4G ‘pwn by broadcast’ problem you reported earlier this year? I had 4G disabled due to that, on the off chance that some of the local criminals would buy some cheap chinese gear, download a working exploit and probe every phone in range all over town in the hope of getting into phones of the police.
>”While most may never be attacked in stingrays, it is still recommended to disable 2G cellular connections, especially since it does not have any downsides.”
The downside would be losing connectivity. I spend a lot of time way out in the countryside where there’s often no service or almost none. My network allows 2G, and I need it sometimes. I have an option on the phone to disable 2G, I may do that when I’m in the city and I have good 5G connectivity, but not out in the country.
I would imagine that the stingray exploits, like most of the bad things in this world, are probably things you will run into in the crowded big cities.
I stopped using it in a mobile (Wi-Fi line) environment, so I’m almost ignorant of the actual situation,
But the recent reality in Japan makes me realize that “the infrastructure of the web is nothing more than a papier-mâché fiction”.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/17/google-chrome-to-enable-https-first-by-default-for-all-users/#comment-4572402
It is already beyond the scope of what an individual can do.
What we should be aware of is the reality that “governments and those in power want to control the world through the Web”, and efforts to counter (resist and prevent) such ambitions are necessary.
Why do you want people to disable the privacy features? Hmmmmm?
Now You: do you plan to keep the Ads privacy features enabled?
I’d like to tell you, but apparently if you make a post critical of Google, you get censored. * [Editor: removed, just try to bring your opinion across without attacking anyone]
@Martin
You website is still psychotic. Comments attach to random stories.
@Martin please do fix the comments, it’s completely insane commenting here! :[
@Martin
The comments are seriously messed up on gHacks now. These comments are mixed with the article at the below URL.
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/18/android-how-to-disable-2g-cellular-connections-to-improve-security/
And comments on other articles are from as far back as 2010.
What does this article has anything to do with all the comments on this article? LOL I think this Websuite is ran by ChatGPT. every article is messed up. Some older comments from 2015 shown up in recant articles, LOL
The picture captioned “Clearing the Android Auto’s cache might resolve the issue” is from Apple Carplay ;)
How about other things that matter:
Drop survival?
Screen toughness?
Degree of water and dust protection?