Apple's Photos app is functional enough, but lacking in features. Photo Gallery+ promises to give you greater control over how you manage and share your precious photographs and home movies.
Ever been frustrated that Photos won't let you arrange images into albums without mucking about with folders on a desktop machine? You'll appreciate Photo Gallery+'s intuitive galleries. Create one, give it a name, then quickly and easily move stuff from one group to another. Rather than drag individual photos about, simply touch all the thumbnails you want, then select a destination.
You may also filter gallery contents to display only videos, photos, items shot within a range of dates, or media created in a particular geographic location. You can't automatically select whole groups based on that metadata, so putting a large number of new goodies in their proper places can be more time-intensive than one might like. Still, the distinct albums that result come in handy when you're determined to keep private family snaps from accidentally showing up in work-related slideshows. Browsing photos is a breeze, with responsive detection of orientation changes, though you are forced into portrait mode to view each thumbnail collection.
Most users will probably forgive the app's inconsistent rendering of slideshow transition effects. Likewise, they might not mind that videos can't be rewound, fast-forwarded, or even paused once started, but only stopped completely. But there is one bizarre requirement that'll turn off just about everyone: the application won't even run unless you have Location Services enabled. It matters little whether this is the result of a design flaw or an ill-conceived Apple-mandated requirement for accessing location metadata. Either way, Photo Gallery+ chews through your battery with unnecessary swiftness. Sure, you could visit your device's Settings menu before and after each use, but there's just no good reason why you should have to.
The ability to share your photos easily via Facebook, TwitPic, and email makes up for this silliness a bit. Photo Gallery's offer to email photos in one of three sizes is an especially nice touch. Strangely, the deceptively named "actual size" option still resizes your photo for transmission, and somehow manages to decrease resolution even as it inflates the outgoing file's size. Thankfully, however, you still can trust Photo Gallery+ never to alter your original files.
The bottom line. While Photo Gallery+ is an easy-to-use and fully-featured substitute for Photos, it comes with more than its own fair share of limitations.
iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 4.2 or later
Intuitive gallery management, filtering, and sharing integration. Responsive interface. Leaves your source files alone. Requires just 5.5 MB of space.
Requires battery-draining Location Services. Transition effects don't always work properly. No video transport controls. Misleading email scaling options.
