Monthly Archives: September 2010

There are many accessories you can buy for your smartphone and cases, docks, chargers, screen protectors are but a few. Occasionally, however, something unique comes along and proves that true innovation can bring benefits to your smartphone usage in the simplest of ways. Smartphone cameras have long been little more than features the manufacturers felt they had to include and the quality was far from important, but in recent times that has changed and the iPhone 4, Nokias and even the later HTC and BlackBerry’s now pack cameras that are good enough to let you leave your compact camera at home. They still have limitations though-

Ever tried to zoom out on a smartphone camera?

How often have you snapped a picture and felt like you haven’t caught got everything you are seeing?

These simple annoyances still get in the way of smartphone photography and thus the camera you always have with you is hindered despite its good quality lens and high megapixel count. Photojojo (say that after a few beers) has come up with some lenses that are designed to help you capture more without having to splash out on a new phone with a much more sophisticated camera, and arguably brought with them some features that are not available on ‘any’ smartphone available today. For $40 you get a lens bundle capable of wide angle, macro and fisheye functionality which sounds like quite good value, but that would be merely scraping the surface.

I am going to start by explaining what you get in the package and how you attach each lens to your phone; often the simplest ideas are the best. In fact I am going to start in the most boring of places, the invoice.

How many invoices do you receive with a free Dinosaur and a line that says “1 Rawwwwwr! $.00 each.”? It offers an indication of what the company is like and instead of $40.00 the total comes to “$40.00 dollaroos!” It is either brilliant branding or every employee is smoking serious amounts of something they should not be smoking. I suspect it is the former. If you take a trip to http://photojojo.com you will see what I mean about the tone of the presentation- it’s like surfer dude city, but with photography and some of the products are at the very least intriguing. To be honest, they had me as soon as my 6 year-old daughter asked if she could call the Dinosaur ‘Dino’ and then proceeded to cuddle him all night, despite his diminutive size.

Anyway, in each lens packet you get the lens, a lens cover, 2 magnetic rings and a lanyard with a magnetic attachment and these come together to produce my favourite part of the entire product; the way they all fit to make attaching a lens to your camera as easy as you could wish for. The care and attention given to how the purchaser will use the product suggests that they are not pot smoking surfer dudes after all, but clever people capable of producing clever products. I tested these lenses on my iPhone 4, but do note the disclaimer that is currently on the site- “iPhone 4 Disclaimer: our sticky lens rings don’t play well with your sleek, well designed glass backing. Dern you Steve Jobs!” Mine worked perfectly because I have a ZAGG protector on the back and maybe Photojojo could do something similar and bundle a small circular backing for the magnetic attachment to stick to- would make sense for a phone with one of the very best mobile cameras squeezed into it.

The simplicity of sticking a magnetic ring around a lens and then pushing a magnetic lens onto the ring is brilliant. It is an age old problem and one that has been solved in a variety of ways, but this is the best I have seen so far. Once the ring is in place you just drop the lens on and away you go. Add to this the fact that the rings will fit almost every phone in the world and this makes it a universal purchase for everyone, and every phone you own. I have tried the lenses on my son’s Sony Ericsson and my wife’s Nokia and they fit perfectly.

So, they fit phones OK, but what happens when you are not using them. You are unlikely to want to keep the lenses on permanently (imagine that?) so you need somewhere to store them. This is the other considerate part of the design that works so well. The lanyards attach to a keyring, or whatever else you want to put them on, and they hold a small circular magnet; simply attach a lens to the lanyard and put the lens cover on and you are done. It all works extremely well, but one word of caution. The magnets are extremely magnety (?) and will interfere with a bundle of keys. I found myself constantly untangling my keys from them and would prefer them top have less magnetism on the edges.

Now the important bit. How well do the lenses work? I would love to go into a detailed explanation about depth of field, lighting and whatever else photographers talk about, but I have no clue at all. Instead, here are some examples of how my photos came out using these lenses-

Standard iPhone photo-

Wide Angle lens attached-

Standard iPhone photo-

With Fisheye lens attached-

It would be fair to say that the examples above are not ideal to demonstrate the effect the lenses have on captured images. They should have been taken in a rolling field with lambs gambling along to accentuate the extra detail you can capture, but as I said I am no photographer and forgot the artistic bit.

However, they work and they work very well indeed. These are accessories for a mobile phone, but they add features that are not available in any smartphone. They help you take better photos and that is impressive by any measure. There are few accessories that I cannot fault, but in this case I am mightily impressed by the quality, thoughtfulness of design and price point. My struggle with magnetic keys continues, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that Photojojo has come up with innovative smartphone accessories that are more than luxury purchases; they give you something new and extend the value of your smartphone more than the likes of Apple, HTC and the rest can do through hardware alone. Superb!

Available from Photojojo for $40 Dollaroos!