New App: LomoLomo & LomoLomo Pro, approach with caution!!
Sunday, December 26, 2010 at 6:40PM | Glyn Evans WARNING: Could this be a new scam from an old friend?
For those of you who have been following this blog long enough, you will remember the Molinker scam just over a year ago, where Chinese developer Molinker was expelled from the App Store, taking with it over 1,000 apps, and all for posting shill 5 star reviews to make people buy their apps.
Not long after their expulsion, they were allowed back in to the App Store, but this time trading as Shining Works, producing camera skinning apps. I can't remember how many apps they produced under this new name, but they all had the same functionality, but just looked different, and whilst there are 5 apps currently listed in the App Store they have not been updated since April 2010, and will undoubtedly disappear over the coming months.
A few days ago I got an email from Patrick Timney [who some of you will know/remember] with details on 2 new apps, LomoLomo [price: free] and LomoLomo Pro [price: £0.59/$0.99/€0.79] from a new developer called MoMoTravel Consulting Inc. Now who do you think MoMoTravel Consulting Inc. is? Yes you guessed it, it's the same person [see domain registrant details below] who is behind Shining Works, who was previously one of the people behind Molinker!!
In the interest of readers of the iPhoneography blog I decided to check out these apps, and found that neither offered anything new, they're buggy, produce average looking results, and they regularly crash, and are similar in fictionality to Instagram and Phototreats, but with one big difference, they cost big bucks, $6* for LomoLomo Pro and $10* for LomoLomo [free version].
Now I'm not going to review either of these apps, if you want to read a review, then check out Marty Yawnick's review over at Life in LoFi, but what I am going to do, is warn you, the readers of my blog, that if you do decided to buy into these apps, then buy into them with caution, as there is no guarantee, as with so many apps, that these will stand the test of time.
*Total price if you buy all the in-app purchase options.
LomoLomo, LomoLomo Pro, Molinker, ShiningWorks in Warning
Reader Comments (13)
Glyn I don't understand the App store rationale. If they banned Camera+ for months then allowed them back without the volumesnap control but with an updated app, I get that. But how is Steve Zheng continually approved with his money-raking scam apps? Why is he continually allowed to change up and submit crap apps that only do one thing well and that is to rip off the consumer? Personally, there seems to be a lot of poorly conceived apps lately in the app store. Not sure if hipstamatic started the in-app purchase trend but I'm growing weary of that cash cow as well.
This is a great app, I bought it and it has given me some awesome photos,especiall double exposure lense,BUT... It crashes a hell of alot,even to the point of totally freezing the phone completely, fix these bugs and it will be great
This is great app! Best app in AppStore! Plz think of my children!
Steve, fix the crashing bugs and it will be a good app but it crashes so much.
Never going to buy anything from such scammers! They lost their truthfulness forever!
Thanks for the warning Glyn.. i will not buy this app. Especially not after reading Steve Z's smart a*s contribution in the comments..
I find it to be a very fun app. It's never crashed on me and hopefully never will. Am on the iphone 4 version 4.2.1. The double exposure + fisheye are the other two camera bodies i bought. They're nothing to shout about but it does give you some really artistic photos. The pro version comes with 8 different lens. Although the lenses randomly change and there's no way to stick to just one, you can choose which you would like to use first. Besides that, you get the whole LOMO Wall which enables you to share your photos to Flickr /Facebook/Tumblr etc. You can also browse other users photos from the same city as you.
Conclusion, if you like Lomo styled photos and love sharing them to the world, this is a cool app to have besides Hipstamatic. (But even Hipstamatic doesn't have a SHARE feature).
The only downside to LomoLomo is that with the iphone 4, you can't use your flash.
It crashes a hell of alot on 3GS 4.2.1 but when it works is good.
True, It crashes alot!!! But it's an awesome app when working well. Right now I can't login, I wonder why maybe it crashed again whooops!
i bought this app a month ago and was contented with what it can offer. the app was recently updated and there were a lot of improvements. a lot of bugs were fixed and camera lenses can be chosen manually.. although i am not sure with the 3G and 3Gs. in fairness with the developer, this app is worth your money if you are into kind of stuffs.
I agree with the previous poster.
Using latest OS for the iphone4 and lomlomo pro for about a week or so. No crashes at all so far and seems fairly bug free. I can upload pictures from this app onto the lomowall and facebook more easily than using the facebook app itself.
Also would point out that you can choose which lens, which camera body and which framing style and it remains set until you decide to change one or other of the choices.
This is with the exception of the 'action sampler' option camera which takes four photos on after the other and arranges them in a grid. This does use random settings.
Otherwise you have user control.
Perhaps the developer has responded to the scathing crit here and in the blog referred to?
Either way, perhaps the reviewer should take another look as the app is great fun and in my opinion at least as good a histamatic.
i got the lomolomo free version and yeah it crashes a lot! but so far, i am contented with how my simple photos turns into something really artistic cos of the fake lomo effect.
i downloaded the update for the free version and got the 5 lenses for 0.99 as their valentines day treat. i guess it's a reasonable price.
@camille
But why buying a crashing copycat from a developer who proved two times that his apps will stop being updated?
For me a waste of money.
For 1.99 you can get the real thing like Hipstamatic, Cameramatic or others.
Just my 50 cent.