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Eye-Fi Mobile X2 card and mobile apps enable Direct Mode transfer of pics

by Steven Sande Apr 12th 2011 at 10:30AM

The makers of the Eye-Fi Wi-Fi enabled SDHC memory cards have announced a new feature today -- the ability to use Wi-Fi Direct Mode and special Eye-Fi mobile apps to transfer pictures from a digital camera to a mobile device when there's no wireless network available. This was first announced back in January, and it's finally about to drop.

A new 8 GB Mobile X2 card with the Direct Mode enabled will be available starting on April 17 for US$79.99, and a free firmware upgrade will be available to owners of existing X2 Eye-Fi cards to add the capability one week later.

Direct Mode makes it possible, with the aid of new Eye-Fi apps for iOS and Android, to simply take photos with a digital camera and have them uploaded to the mobile devices in seconds without the need for cables. I'm personally happy about that, since I find the Apple Camera Connection Kit dongles extremely easy to lose (and they're not exactly inexpensive).

With an iPhone (or Android phone) in your pocket and an Eye-Fi Mobile X2 card in your camera, you can also make instant backups of your photos, even when you're nowhere near a Wi-Fi network.

There's a short marketing video on the next page courtesy of Eye-Fi.



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The makers of the Eye-Fi Wi-Fi enabled SDHC memory cards have announced a new feature today -- the ability to use Wi-Fi Direct Mode and...
 

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15 Comments

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wayne.edginton

I've been holding out for RAW and geo-tagging and the ability to eye-fi it via iPhone back to my PC running Lightroom. Is this possible now?

April 16 2011 at 3:15 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
oddtodd


What always bothered me before, from what I could tell, is that they were trying to control where I can send too for sharing my pics. But maybe that has changed, or I never understood it.

All I want to do is to be able to take a pic with my digital camera, pull out my iPhone, copy the pic to my iPhone album, and then email it immediately to family and friends, no waiting to get home and syncing the camera to my PC first.

April 12 2011 at 10:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
JJ

Will this work with videos taken on the camera? Or is it only for photos?

April 12 2011 at 1:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to JJ's comment
Martyn

It's too bad they don't support copying files to the Eye-fi. I'd like to put one of these in my digital picture frame and be able to wirelessly update the pictures on it.

April 12 2011 at 1:36 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Martyn's comment
Raj

If money is no object, you could use an iPad1 as your picture frame... it even has that built into the lockscreen.

April 12 2011 at 4:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mabhatter

Bingo!
I've been dying for that one myself. Rather than have my office plastered with the "family shrine" I bought a small, basic photoframe. But getting pics from the iPhone to the frame is the weak link. I can play games with multiple SD cards, etc, but I'd rather have something like eye-fi that I can just open an app and move pics I just shot last night right off the phone!!!

April 12 2011 at 10:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Therese

This is so well timed! I just ordered an eye-fi card with a Canon ELPH 300 HS and was looking into the various hacks out there to try to create an approximation of this feature... This is brilliant.

Also, major respect for Eye-fi for enabling this on their older cards... They didn't have to do that, and probably could have made a lot of money selling the "new" versions of the cards to owners of the old ones. They've certainly earned my loyalty.

April 12 2011 at 11:33 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Therese's comment
Chris Dunning

Speaking very frankly, Eye-Fi has been one of the most user friendly companies I've ever had a relationship with. They're very prompt about getting back to you if you contact them, they have been really good about promoting value-added third party software and developers, and they've always impressed me with the amount of features they're willing to give in updates. You won't be disappointed by the card, and if you're anything like me, you'll find yourself wondering how you did without it before.

When they released their iPhone app, I was fully prepared to pay a hefty sum to get the same kind of functionality as I got with my dSLR and Eye-Fi combo, but it was a free App for people who already owned cards. They could make a killing charging for this software, but they give it to their users for free.

Awesome company, great product. :)

April 12 2011 at 11:56 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
tony d

Didn't the Pro card do this? I think you were able to set up an ad hoc network with a laptop. This is a really cool feature if it still works with laptops, too

April 12 2011 at 10:54 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to tony d's comment
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