The idea behind QuickPix is to be a camera app that is so fast that you’ll always be ready to capture a precious moment. It does this by starting up faster than Apple’s own Camera app and by taking photographs very quickly, and it still provides advanced features that Apple does not offer.

In actual use though, QuickPix is only a fraction of a second faster than the Camera app to start up and when switching back to it after having been suspended, it is only faster by about a second. Altogether, this speed increase is practically negligible and leaves plenty of time to lose a potential Pulitzer-winning shot.

Where you will see a significant difference in speed is with snapping photographs. QuickPix does away with the superfluous shutter effect and shrinking thumbnail animation that is used in Apple’s Camera app. With animations eliminated, you can take up to two photos per second on an iPhone 4. With RapidFire mode enabled it will take a satisfying burst of photos as long as you keep your finger on the camera icon.

Another claim of QuickPix is that allows you to take photographs right in the midst of recording a video. Although technically it does do what is claimed, the “photo” that you get is actually just a single frame of the video. I guess this would be useful to people who want still images from their videos without resorting to doing screen grabs of their videos, but the limited resolution of 720p video probably would not appeal to most people.

Beyond these core features, QuickPix also supports separate controls for focus and exposure with a tap and double-tap, respectively. Most camera apps now have this feature and it is implemented very simply and effectively in QuickPix. Because of its focus on performance though, the interface is quite spartan and a bit unrefined compared to those of its competitors.

A nice time-saving feature in QuickPix is that photos are sent straight to the camera roll instead of being sequestered within the app. This is a limitation imposed by Apple and QuickPix actually does abide by this rule but just gives you the illusion that it has bypassed this limitation. You will notice that there is actually a delay as it has to copy the image file from within the app to the camera roll. Speaking of the camera roll, QuickPix also has a built-in viewer so that you can see what is in the camera roll. Unfortunately, it is quite slow, clunky, and limited to an image at a time. It’s probably better to avoid that function in its current form.

QuickPix has some innovative features and is probably the fastest camera app, but you may be better served with other camera apps that have more refined interfaces and more features.

QuickPix is currently on sale for $0.99.

[etRating value=“ 3.5”]

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