iPhone camera accessory review

Add a shutter button on your iPhone with POPA—formerly Red Pop—the latest release from Beep Industries (the same company behind the iPad accessory MoviePeg). The idea’s simple: attach the accessory to your phone’s dock connector, run the accompanying app, and start taking pictures—using a big red button instead of the tiny camera button on the screen.

Why ?

We all love the elegant design of our iPhones. It’s lightweight and sleek, and the screen is remarkably uncluttered despite its lack of physical buttons. This is absolutely fantastic most of the time, but if you are often fumbling for the camera button when capturing your precious moments on camera, it can be quite a pain.

Ever use the main camera on the back to take action shots or a picture of yourself?

What we love

With POPA, you don’t even have to look at the button; simply feeling it with your fingertips is enough. Just press, and you will get that shot. Plus, it gives you something more to hold on to, which means fewer chances of the phone moving around or completely sliding out of your grasp. POPA is about as big your palm, and at 55 grams, it’s pretty easy to carry around. It also doesn’t need batteries, so it’s the only thing you’ll ever need to bring along.

What we don’t love

One of POPA’s drawbacks, however, is its need for the exclusive app. It won’t work without the app. And it’s a pretty lackluster app, too. Other apps can provide you with plenty of other useful features. Another disadvantage with this accessory is it can’t be attached with your phone’s case on, so if you’re taking a picture of yourself jumping around and it’s not impossible to drop your phone, be extra careful when using POPA.

The end game

POPA’s simplicity is certainly nice, and that is clearly the main selling point. But the biggest problem with providing a function so simple is it’s very easy for others to follow suit. If you already have the iOS 5, you know that you can now use the volume-up button to take pictures. Unless you find it hard to press the volume-up button, there’s really no need for POPA—especially since it limits the usefulness of your iPhone camera. Perhaps if it could be used with the phone case on or without requiring you to use a specific app, it would actually be a must-have accessory for your Apple device.