App Review: Minus for iPhone, iPod touch & iPad

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Minus is a simple file sharing application that will help you better manage your files on your desktop but also on your mobile iOS device such as the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The application supports a variety of files, from images to movies to documents, and it can be a particularly powerful sharing tool especially if you’re constantly exchanging files with your work colleagues or friends.

Minus relies on the cloud to store your files and each account gets 10GB of free storage, which is upgradeable up to 50GB using a friend referral system.

We have discovered Minus here at TFTS in early 2011, well before they launched their mobile application, while we were looking for a convenient and fast way to share files online during important trade shows we have covered (CES, MWC) between team members that are currently spread over four continents. But back then Minus didn’t have a mobile app which is definitely what I personally would have appreciated more than a desktop client.

Luckily for us, such an app exists now, Minus for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, and we have taken it for a thorough spin for you.

App Description

Minus is available for download from the App Store free of charge and it will work on devices that run iOS 4.0 or later. I have tested it on an iPhone 4 with iOS 5 on board and on an iPad running iOS 4.3.3. Here are the “key features” as described by the Minus folks in the App Store:

✓ Upload photos and videos from your Camera or Photo Library
✓ Sharpen, resize, crop, rotate and add effects to images
✓ Publish photos, videos and more to your Minus profile
✓ Share w/ friends through Twitter, Facebook, E-mail, and more
✓ Download and access your files from your Minus.com account
✓ View documents in Excel, Word, PDF, TXT

Getting started

After downloading the app and installing it on the iPhone and iPad I went ahead and created a profile. The procedure is smooth and simple. All you have to do is enter a screen name and a password and you’re in the app’s dashboard. You can register from within the iOS app or from the desktop version. Entering the email is optional, but I’d recommend you do it in case you’ll want to retrieve a lost password.

Sure you’ll say, why do I need a cloud-based application to share and mange files when Apple fixed that problem by introducing iCloud, its own cloud solution that lets users manage their images and files and access them on various supported devices (iOS 5, OS X and Windows)? Well there are various reasons you should consider Minus.

First of all the app offers access to at least 10GB of free storage that should be a more than welcomed addition to your iCloud allowance. And while iCloud lets you access your various files on all your devices, Minus lets you share some of those files with anyone else, just send them the appropriate links and they’ll be able to download the images, documents or videos even if they don’t necessarily have a Minus account.

As soon as I have set up my Minus account I started to actually test its features.

On the iPhone

The app has a simple enough menu that lets you access a mobile dashboard, your profile or upload files.

I started with what was really important for me, uploading images from the iPhone. In order to do that you’ll first have to activate the location services on your device, in case they aren’t turned on already. Once that’s done, the upload process is very simple, Minus lets you import images (or files) from the Camera, the Photo Library or the Movie Library.

In other words the app lets you access the camera and you can take fast pictures which can then be saved straight to the Minus cloud. Unfortunately it appears that the images you capture from inside the app do not get saved in your Photo Library, so I’d suggest you snap pictures using your preferred camera app, which will then be saved locally on the handset and backed up via iCloud. You can then use the app to upload images from your Photo Library or from the iCloud, although in most cases the image libraries will coincide. You can select up to 15 images at a time, although Minus will let you select additional images before uploading them to your profile. Needless to say a Wi-Fi or 3G connection is needed to upload the files. The actual upload process is quite fast. Obviously the more files you have the longer it will take but it’s still pretty fast.

But Minus will not only let you upload raw images you want to share with your friends or colleagues as it’s ready to let you edit the images about to be uploaded on the fly. Sure, it’s no Photoshop but Minus offers quite an extensive assortment of editing options that include: effects (original, enhance, daydream, indiglow, heatwave, cinematic, always sunny, code red, negative) crop, rotate, flip, brightness, contrast, saturation, colors, redeye, stickers, drawing, text, whiten, blemish, sharpen, blur. As you can see there are plenty of options to choose from (and you’ll find them all in the screenshot gallery at the end of the post) to help you improve the picture or screenshot you just took. Once you’re done applying the effects simply save the image and complete the upload.

You can create new folders for your freshly uploaded files, rename them and manage folder privacy. After all, not all the images or files you will save are meant to be shared with the world.

Speaking of sharing, that’s also very simple. Just select the files you want to share or select the whole folder. You’ll be able to share the files via Facebook, Twitter or Email. The files are available instantly on any other device you would be using to access your Minus account, and they’ll also be instantly available to the person you share them with.

Minus also has a social component. You can follow other users, have them follow you and access their stream at any time, at least the public ones. The app also shows you how many times each file has been viewed and starred.

You noticed I mostly referred to image sharing so far, but that’s not everything people share when it comes to computer files. Minus will let you upload and access various other files including videos, Excel, Word, PDF and other text files, but only from the desktop application.

The iPhone app will let you access those files on the iDevice, but it only permits uploading images, and videos as long as they have been recorded on the device, therefore accessible via the Photo Library upload feature. There isn’t an option however to upload other kind of videos, and, most importantly, documents from the smartphone or tablet. Hopefully a future update will soon include such features. Some file syncing features will probably also be welcomed, especially in case Minus decides to further upgrade its mobile apps to better deal with documents.

On the iPad

What Minus could really use is an iPad-friendly application. What I used on the iPad was the iPhone version, which doesn’t look that great when expanded (see the screenshots below). The app works on the tablet exactly in the same manner, although it’s a bit annoying to deal with an interface that’s not optimized for the big screen.

Hopefully a Minus HD version is on its way to offer us an even better tablet experience.

Conclusion

Minus for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad is a great mobile application to help users store and share all sorts of files and it could be helpful both in a business and personal environment. It has a simple, intuitive interface that will get you going in no time. Plus, everything is free, whether we’re talking about the desktop or mobile version.

It’s not an iCloud- or Dropbox-killer and it’s not a social networking service per se, but it’s definitely an app that complements well these services and it’s definitely worth considering adding it to your portfolio of productivity apps. I certainly know I did.

In case you’re wondering, an Android application also exists, just look it up in the Android Market, and a Windows Phone version is also in the works.

App Screenshot Gallery