Android Version Of Motion Stills Is Far Inferior To The IOS Version

Matt
Matt
Jul 24, 2017 · 2 min read

Motion Stills app is now available on Android

Motion Stills, an app specifically designed to work with Apple’s Live Photos, is now available on Android

Google’s very impressive iOS app, Motion Stills, has finally been available to Android. However, the experience of the app in iOS and Android is heaven and hell.

Motion Stills is specifivally designed to work with Apple’s Live Photos feature, where the app works with the short motion sequences that are automatically captured along with each of the photos taken with the default iOS camera app. It then applies clever digital image stabilisation to produce smooth animated GIFs and videos which can be shared separately from the original image. The results are often a big improvement over the originals.

The Android version of the app gives similarly impressive automatically stabilised clips but since Live Photos is exclusive to iOS, Motion stills in Android is forced to function rather differently.

The Android version of the app requires the users to shoot a short video from within the app and then automatically applies Google’s stabilisation magic while recording.

Users can’t search for the existing Live Photos and edit them with the app as well because you will need to shoot one with the app only. This means you have to decide to create a Motion Still at the time the image is taken.

Also you can’t export all the created GIFs or videos together to the phone gallery and they don’t get saved automatically either. In the Android version you will have to export them one by one. However, the sharing is easy.

There is one new feature in the Android Motion Stills, which is ‘Fast Forward.’ It allows the users to ‘compress’ up to a minute of recorded video into a short, stabilised clip that runs at up to 8x normal speed for a time lapse effect.

All in all, to people who have used the app in iOS, the Android version would feel not-so-user-friendly and to some extent inferior to the iOS version. To the people who are the first timers, give it a try. To Google, the Android version of Motion Stills certainly needs lots of improvements.

Written by

Matt

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