Flashback Camera The Re-Disposable Digital Camera - Big Problem

Original, 1/9/2024

Update, 5/6/2024 at the bottom

Moved, 4/4/2025

"Myself and many others assumed that the 24 hour wait for your film roll to develop was just for fun and the photos never left our phone."

Concept

For those who don't know the Flashback One35 is a disposable camera simulator, the project was a fairly successful Kickstarter. Backers were able to order the small physical camera that had all the fun of a disposable camera including view finder, winder, photo counter, rechargeable battery, a real flash, and no screen. The concept is to have a fun screen-free camera to take fun snapshots and live in the moment. The process is that you would take photos, 27 photos per roll, when the roll is done you off-load it to the app to have it developed, 24 hours later your photos are ready. While you wait you can load up another roll and keep going. A fun concept but the initial implementation is far from the simple fun that was originally sold.

Waiting for the app

A few weeks ago I received my One35 camera and accessories but the required companion app was not available yet. I quickly took 27 photos of family holiday fun and waited for the Flashback app to come out. The camera sat quietly on my desk waiting to be unloaded, then about two weeks later when the app was finally released and that's when it got messy.

I was excited to develop my first roll from the holidays, the offload went fine once it completed I hit the "Start developing" button in the app. The Kickstarter originally said 24 hours but I was shocked to see that it said 48 hours (this has been resolved and is now 24 hours). I figured whatever, I would just take more photos and get another roll going. I proceeded to enjoy my day taking photos while out and about with family. It was kind of neat like waiting for a package or a present to arrive...

There's a catch

Throughout the day I took a few rolls, the offload and reload went great, but did not think to hit start develop on any of the new rolls while out and about. When I got home for the evening I offloaded my 4th roll decided it would be great to get them developing. Much to my surprise I was presented with an error stating "You already have a roll developing please wait until it's done" hold up, that meant one at a time!

This whole disposable camera simulation, was now a complete disappointment. With the first roll having 40 hours of developing to go, 3 rolls waiting to be developed, and only being able to process one at a time, I quickly realized that the last photo I took would be ready in 8 days at the earliest!

Community blowback

Needless to say I was not pleased, and neither was the rest of the community. Back on the Kickstarter update post about the app and Instagram, lots of comments about the wait, issues unloading, privacy, and only one roll at a time.

The Flashback crew on Instagram, I'm sure being bombarded with people contacting them, post an update stating they would address privacy issues soon.

At this point, with over a week of "developing" to do I put the camera on my desk where it sat the rest of the weekend. Every roll was another 48 hours and to make it worse if a roll finishes in the early hours of the morning when you are asleep the next roll dose not just start you have to go into the app and push the button before it starts developing essentially making the whole process take even longer.

Flashback responds

Three days after they said they would explain, Flashback posted this update:

"Hi all, we've had a lot of inquiries around how the app and development process works, so I'd like to answer some of the most frequently asked questions here.

Do you process images on the server?

Yes, the development of photos doesn't happen on your mobile device.

Why?

The processing done to develop your photos is currently too intensive to run on a mobile device. Over the last 2 years, we developed our own effects. In particular, our method to generate film grain is complex. Often, "film grain" effects are based on adding random digital noise, but true film grain is fundamentally different. Analog images are composed of grains, not pixels, and our method follows this closely. Our vision for this product has always been to stay true to the analog world, and we've worked hard to never compromise on that.

If we were satisfied with simple filters, we could run them inside the app, but we continue to believe that our current setup is the most flexible in providing the best possible photos from this camera.

When do my photos leave my phone?

Your photos are only retained for the minimum possible time required to process them and aren't used for any other purpose. This means they only leave your phone when shown as "developing".

Are my photos stored securely?

At minimum, all data related to the Flashback app is protected by the Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm, AES-256. This includes photos and all other user-related data that's currently stored or will be stored in future.

Does anyone see my photos?

No person, from Flashback or otherwise, will ever see your photos. While we put a lot of time into developing and maintaining the system, the development process itself is automatic and the photos are not viewable anywhere.

For clarity - we do not retain any copy of your photos and they are only stored while they are being processed. For this reason, please note that uninstalling the Flashback app will delete all photos that aren't currently being processed, including undeveloped rolls and rolls in the Gallery. Your photos remain your property and no other copy of them exists unless you create one.

I hope this can bring some light to many of the questions we've received, but please let me know if you have any questions.

Right now we're actively working on a range of issues: bugfixes for the app, tracking down delayed/stolen packages, diagnosing faulty hardware and more. With more than 100 inquiries received daily, it is taking us some time to get back to everyone. Please be patient and understand that while we are under a lot pressure, our end goal is to deliver an excellent product to every single person who backed Flashback, and we're working tirelessly to make that happen. We've designed the app and camera's software to be quick to update, and all missing deliveries or faulty cameras will be replaced."

~ Mack

This is not what I had in mind

Proprietary effects? Server processing? Internet required? What is going on? None of this had been explained in the Kickstarter. Myself and many others assumed that the "24 hour" wait for your film roll to develop was just for fun and the photos never left our phone. I would imagine that a majority of the users could care less about how authentic the grain looks, we would rather not rely on internet uploads or servers and be able to develop more than one roll at a time.

This entire backend process was completely baffling, why on earth did they decide this was a sustainable process to require servers to handle processing of 1000s of rolls of photos when our phones could easily add some grainy and color effects. Not to mention now the camera requires Flashback to be operating and their servers to be up and running to get our photos. At the time of writing this there is no other way to get your photos off the camera and have access to them directly form the camera.

Should you buy one?

A day later I got my first roll back from being developed, the photos are fun, the physical experience was a blast, but the proprietary server processing looks like something I could easily create using Snapseed or Adobe Lightroom Mobile on my phone.

For me at this point it's a wait and see, but I would NOT recommend this product to anyone right now. I get that it's early and with time the app may change along with my opinion, but until they get this photo development part sorted out this product is a s

UPDATE: 5/6/2024

As of software 1.4.1

A nice series of updates brought the ability to upload three rolls at a time (still processes one at a time), a new film type, notifications, true 24 hour processing, and timer function.

It's great to see some improvements but still one glaring issue. The thing I still can't understand is why photos have to leave the phone and be uploaded to the Flashback servers to develop. Looking at potential trips in the future with no internet makes me question bringing the camera. With no connection a number rolls would pile up then I will have to process all the rolls across multiple days when I get back to civilization. I really wish you could develop on the phone and skip the server's fancy grain processing and colorization.

My new recommendation as of this update:
Looking better but keep waiting to see if enough improvements come or the online upload requirement is removed.