FUJIFILM XApp 4+

Performs some useful functions and definitely better then nothing, however the photos import to your phone in reverse date order, so my iPhone camera roll has batches of Fuji photos in reverse date order which is very annoying. The app should import photos in order of increasing date/time so that it is consistent with the existing phone camera roll photos.

In addition, phone GPS sharing with the camera only works so long as the phone/app is open. As soon as you lock the phone it stops working which is a pain.

I also dislike the (lack of) privacy approach taken by this app, since it forces all users to give “always” location access to even just open the app, yet many app functions don’t require location. So they should just disable specific features, not the entire app, if a user doesn’t want to share location.

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Ver.1.10 improves as follows.
• The application can communicate with the camera via Wi-Fi even if the permission to access "Location" is not set.
• Functions that do not require permissions to access can now be used without setting the permissions to access.

This new app (replacing the infamous Cam Remote) is definitely better for image transfers and general connectivity, but has a glaring flaw when it comes to location syncing with the camera, as it will not stay awake in the background on my iPhone 13 Pro running iOS 16.5 - for some reason Fuji haven’t enabled “background app refresh” so the app just goes to sleep and will not reconnect with the camera again if the initial Bluetooth connection is dropped. In practice this means having to re-open the app on your phone every time you turn the camera on and want location data, making it a laborious manual process that’s not worth the bother. Fix it Fuji!

UPDATE - December 2023 - despite Fuji’s response below and various updates to the app, it’s still the case that once the camera is turned off or the phone/app goes to sleep, the Bluetooth connection is dropped and you get no further GPS updates until you manually reopen and restart the app. It’s the one big let-down in an otherwise good app.

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Ver.1.10 improves as follows.
• The minor bug is fixed that some smartphone models fail to connect to the camera via Wi-Fi in rare cases.

Definitely an improvement over the old app, and I’m glad I can finally grab RAW files directly onto my phone. However I don’t understand why on earth the app needs to have always-on location permissions (which drain the battery). I understand that it’s needed for a geotagging feature to work, but to block the use of the entire app unless you give it full permission seems ridiculously overreaching.

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Ver.1.10 improves as follows.
• The application can communicate with the camera via Wi-Fi even if the permission to access "Location" is not set.
• Functions that do not require permissions to access can now be used without setting the permissions to access.