Dropbox for iOS Adds Handy Automatic Camera Uploads

Cloud storage utility Dropbox updated its iPhone app with automatic uploads of photos and videos from the iPhone’s camera roll. The feature works over Wi-Fi and 3G and uploads your photos to the cloud, where you get up to 3GB of free storage.

Android users will already be familiar with the feature, which has been available from Dropbox for some time. Now iPhone users can also use the PhotoStream-like service, with the added bonus that they can also share the photos publicly.

To get started, you’ll need the latest version of Dropbox, 1.5, which is now available in the App Store. The first time you open the app after the update you will be prompted to enable automatic uploads. You also get to choose whether you want to upload your previous pics, or only shots from now on.

Note that the photos will not be uploaded in the background from the Camera app, like it’s the case with Apple’s PhotoStream. Dropbox will upload the photos to a folder of your choosing once you bring the app in the foreground, which is not as seamless as background uploading, but nevertheless a limitation of third-party apps on iOS.

The good part about automatic photo upload with Dropbox is that you get free extra storage, up to 3GB, in 500MB increments for your photo and video uploads only. You’ll want to be weary of using this feature over 3G though, as it could easily eat up your data allowance, so using Wi-Fi is recommended. If you have photos on your PC and Mac, Dropbox has an automatic upload utility for that too.

With the latest update, Dropbox added a couple of other improvements too, including moving and deleting sets of files at once, a new Gallery view for uploaded media and removed any file size limitations for uploads.

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