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Comment by cyberax | Hacker News Reader

Camera makers: please just use Android and allow us to sync photos automatically.

First part hell no second part hell yeah. I wouldn't want to deal with current equivalent of Android 2.3 or 4.0.4 or eMMC failures or 5 minute bootup delay from battery insertion to first shutters with high end $1.5k cameras.

What's needed is USB-C host on iPhone. Then USB MTP or MSC to extract and upload. Which, is arguably already there. I think what's really missing is iOS/Android side willingness to ingest offline files.

You can have instant Android with suspend-to-RAM. My Galaxy camera did that in 2012. And the cold boot took something like 12 seconds.

And I've seen modern Android devices cold-boot in 2 seconds.

You don't need Android for that (thank god).

How would you upload to Immich?

Using their extensively documented restful API is the most obvious option to me: https://api.immich.app/endpoints

I mean, yes. But how would you put the code that utilizes this API onto the camera?

Ah. I didn't realize you were looking to install arbitrary android apps on a camera.

That does exist. Samsung used to make android interchangeable lens cameras, and now Yongnuo does.

I owned that Samsung camera (Samsung Galaxy Camera)! Samsung made ONE model and then abandoned it.

It was awesome for its time, I could make pictures at a party, upload them to Picassa right away, and share them with a friend. It had a GPS receiver (a thing that cameras STIL!!!!! lack) so I had automatic geotagging.

I tried to get YN455, but they don't sell them in the US and apparently it doesn't even have proper English localization. I do speak some Mandarin, but I still want something localized.

You can pair the camera with your Android phone and use that to do whatever.

But also, manufacturers could do apps and support APIs without adding a whole Android OS with all the downsides that it entails.

But maybe we're talking about different kind of cameras.

I have never seen camera that actually did anything useful with the pairing mode. It's inevitably buggy and useless, also requiring a manufacturer's app on the phone.

That's why it's _still_ easier to just pop the SD-card and copy files. So even Apple had to add the SD slot back to Mac Books.

I agree, but your camera doesn't currently have Android either, so you're comparing current situation to what could be. The manufacturers could fix the bugs and make pairing more useful. I'd rather have manufacturers app on my phone than Android on my camera.

There were cameras with FTP or WebDAV support, when connected to WiFi. I guess it’s just not really popular?

I don't think I've seen one that actually worked. The closest one was a third-party app for a Sony camera that used the Picassa/Google Photos API.

Those always existed but I suspect it's for some highly specific business use cases, something like fashion magazine photo studios or some R&D facility infra. They're not for reliably syncing photos over the Internet.

Or maybe it's just the matter of someone writing a single executable installer to set up the host for those but I don't know...

Ironically, Android started as a DSLR OS.

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