Dropbox Can Now Automatically Sync Your Android Photos | Hacker News Reader

Dropbox Can Now Automatically Sync Your Android Photos

techcrunch.com

36 pointsnewman31419 comments

Sync is a misleading term here. What the new Android Dropbox app added is an Automatic photo/video uploader, to a pre-defined folder on the server side. One way.

If you want true two-way sync for Android, try Dropsync (https://market.android.com/details?id=com.ttxapps.dropsync). Another app called FolderSync also seems quite good.

Full disclosure: I am the author of Dropsync

I should add that Dropsync is also capable of Instant uploading, and not only photos/videos. Any new/modified files in your designated local folders in your phone/tablet.

+1 for Dropsync. definitely one of the most useful apps on my phone.

tdtran, one feature missing from Dropsync is the ability to exclude folders (like the cache folder in the camera DCIM directory). Please add this :)

[Edit: And welcome to HN. ]

It's funny because Ubuntu One was doing this already. For 5GB free. Works w/ Windows and Android/iOS too.

Dropbox really had to play catchup on this one: lots of competitors offered this (Sugarsync, Box, etc), and lots of addon tools for Android were popping up with this functionality.

It's just one of those ideas that make total sense.

Are there any good and relevant articles on dropbox architecture or implementation? Are they open about it, or is it more or less a secret?

http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/3/14/6-lessons-from-dro...

Kind of short on architectural detail. Links to a presentation video that I didn't watch but which might have more detail.

Dropbox is also boosting the free space with each photo or video upload, up to a maximum of +5GB, which is very nice. I already got them.

I wonder how Dropbox is going to handle the tradeoff of syncing lots of data (to/from a space limited device) and cellular data limits. I sure hope there is an option to only transfer over Wifi.

In testing DropBox's new client out:

1) There is no way to start the import wizard via menu dropdown.

2) There is no way to specify an alternate folder(s).

There should definitely be a an option "Sync Photos over Wifi Only" and it should probably be the default.

Google+ let's you choose, so I love snapping shots and then having them show up there whenever I get home. Even with my unlimited data, I'd still prefer wifi.

The "Wifi Only" option exists.

Just updated a couple of minutes ago and it does have the Wifi Only option. Took a picture and it was in my folder on my computer right away.

Whoops, bad news for Syncly (http://www.syncly.de/) - does exactly that.

It's nice to have a choice. Syncly is also useful for Strato Hidrive users as it is now possible to use it as a storage backend.

I'd prefer it if they created a WP7 app.

Skydrive does this natively in WP7.

And WP7 isn't available on Android or iPhone.

but it resizes the images to vga resolution, so more or less useless.

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