Review: Dropbox
November 7, 2009
Overview
The wait is over. Last month, The Dropbox team released its long awaited iPhone app that works in conjunction with their award-winning file syncing service. If you are unfamiliar with Dropbox, check out the video tour at getdropbox.com.
Features
Anyone familiar with Drobox’s functional but limited iPhone web interface will feel right at home with the new app. Across the bottom are three tabs: Favorites, My Dropbox, and Settings. The My Dropbox tab is where you will spend most of your time as it provides an instant snapshot of everything in your Dropbox. But all of your files are not instantly downloaded most likely due to the massive hit you’d take on your battery by downloading large amounts of data. Folders and file types are clearly identifiable by icons similar to what you would expect to see in Windows or OSX. Clicking on a supported file type opens the file to view (a full list of supported file types is provided in the app itself). All your heavy hitters such as Word, Excel, and PDF are covered. Taking advantage of new functionality available in iPhone OS 3.0, one of the app’s best features is the ability to stream music or video stored in your Dropbox (in an iPhone supported format) directly to your phone. Other supported features include the abilities to email a link to any of your files, to mark files as favorites for local caching on your iPhone, and to take photos or videos and instantly upload them to your Dropbox.The Breakdown
The Good: First off, the initial requirement for being on iPhone OS 3.1 or greater has been lifted with the latest update to this app (1.0.1). All of you still hanging on to 3.0 can now join in on the fun (although, 3.1 is jailbroken, so why are any of you still holding out?). This app is a well-designed, logical extension of the Dropbox system which is exactly what I expect from this team of talented developers. If you are like me and use Dropbox in
lieu of constantly emailing files to yourself or others, you will appreciate the ability to have access to these same files on the go. Want to have access to an important document during a meeting without lugging your laptop? You can do thatwith ease.
Perhaps my favorite feature is the ability to take photos (and videos, for you lucky 3GS owners) and upload them directly to your Dropbox. This saves the hassle of emailing it to yourself, or worse, hooking up your iPhone to sync with iPhoto.
Performance of the app is excellent. Traversing through your files feels snappy and responsive, and I have experienced no crashes on my iPhone 3G during my normal use over the past several weeks. Downloading a 5 MB mp3 to my only took about 20 seconds over a 3G connection, although the speed will have more to do with your connection quality than the app itself (insert snarky remark about AT&T network here).
You also have the ability to create an account from within the app.
The Bad:
There really isn’t anything bad about this app. But I did notice a few things I would like to see improved in future versions.
First, there is no refresh button to be found on the My Dropbox or Favorites tabs. The app polls the Dropbox servers when you first launch and anyti
me you change tabs, but it would be nice to not have to click a different tab and then come back just to see your files update.
Second, by design, the Favorites tab does not download updates to files you have locally downloaded until you specifically tell it to do so. That’s fine, but if you have an out-of-date file locally downloaded and you click on it in the My Dropbox tab, it automatically shows you the locally cached file. Not a huge deal since you can just go and download the latest update, but I would prefer that My Dropbox tab always access your files stored in the cloud whereas the Favorites tab should show you your local stash.
Finally, while the app provides the ability to share files via a public link, there is no way to invite someone to a folder. This is odd, because from the desktop client, you have the ability to share folders but not individual files (unless you place the file in your public folder). I've heard that folder sharing may be coming in the 1.5 update, but I can't confirm.
