FotoFox: compress photos and videos on mobile devices
Photo and videos that you capture on your mobile devices can take up a sizable chunk of storage space. If you are an avid photographer for instance, you may have run into storage issues previously on your device.
This is usually resolved temporarily by moving photos to local or remote servers before deleting them on the device you took them on.
FotoFox is a new application for Android and iOS devices that offers another approach. Instead of saving the full version of photos or videos on the device, it saves a highly compressed versions on it instead on it which saves storage space.
To make sure that you still got access to the full version should you need to, it is uploading all media files to cloud servers so that you get access to the files whenever the need arises.
According to the company, photos taken with FotoFox take up only 10% of the space of original photos. This may vary though from device to device as it depends on several factors.
The app reduced 1.5 Megabyte large photos taken on an Android 5 device to 0.1 Megabyte each and 2.6 Megabyte photos to 0.3 Megabyte during tests.
FotoFox supports video as well. If you use it to capture video it will use compression to reduce the size of the video that is stored on the device. It reduced the size of videos to less than 20% of the original size during tests.
All files get uploaded to the cloud automatically when you use the app to take photos or capture videos. The manage page enables you to check the savings for each individual media file and the total savings up to that point in time.
Download options are provided for each file to save it to the local device. One thing that is missing is an option to transfer the photos or videos to a computer instead for storage.
Cloud storage is unlimited according to the application's description. I'm always skeptic when claims like these are made as it is usually too good to be true. It remains to be seen how the company plans to finance the storage, operations and development as it is not charging for the app, storage or extra features right now.
You may use the app to compress and upload photos and videos that are already stored on the device. This has the potential to save lots of space depending on how many photos and videos are stored on it at that time.
The compressed photos and videos look fine on small screen devices.
Verdict
FotoFox offers an interesting service that should appeal to mobile users who take photos or videos regularly provided that you don't need access to full versions on the device at all times.
I recommend to make regular backups of photos and videos uploaded to the service though until the company reveals how it plans to keep it sustainable.
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?