app review: Dropbox

Remember the days when everyone used those flash drives to carry files around with them? These flash drives used to be the thing that the majority of people used to transfer files around on various computers. But now it’s 2010, and there are new ways to do file transferring across multiple machines. Enter Dropbox, the free (or paid premium) solution to your file transferring woes.

What is Dropbox? It is an online service that allows the user to install a folder on the machine for Dropbox, and all files that are put in this specific folder are synced across the Dropbox cloud. Users start with 2GB free, and can upgrade to 50GB for $9.99 /mo or 100GB for $19.99 /mo. Referrals with a generated link will grant the user 250MB more for each successful referral. Files are all synced instantly and show up instantly on all other computers once any change has been made with the folder. The best part about Dropbox? The free iPhone app.

The iPhone app does what you’d expect it to do: you gain access to all of your files on Dropbox straight from your iPhone. When the app is launched, a prompt will come up to login or create a new account. Once that’s done, the main screen will be one of the main Dropbox folder, which will also have the preset default subfolders such as Photos, Music, Documents, etc. If there are a lot of files and folders in the Dropbox folder, it will be alphabetized automatically to make life easier. If there are subfolders, tapping on them will open it and present the contents on another screen (if there are any more folders, simply rinse and repeat).

If a file is selected, the app will open it and present it for viewing on the iPhone/iPod Touch. Any type of file can be stored in Dropbox, however, for viewing on the iPhone, there is a limit to what can be viewed on the device. Images (.jpg, .tiff, .gif, .png), music (.mp3, .aiff, .m4a, .wav), movies (.mov, .mp4, .m4v), Microsoft Word documents (.doc, .docx), Microsoft PowerPoint presentations (.ppt, .pptx), Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (.xls, .xlsx), Adobe PDF, Keynote presentations (.key), Pages documents (.pages), Numbers spreadsheets (.numbers), web pages (.htm, .html) and text and rich-text files (.txt, .rtf) are all viewable in the Dropbox iPhone app. Everything else than that mentioned will bring up a screen saying the file is not viewable on the iPhone.

Viewing files is pretty simple – multitouch gestures will zoom in and out of a document or image. If there are multiple pages, simply scrolling through them all is easy. The only thing that you can’t do in Dropbox is edit any files. The app itself just serves as a portable flash drive on your device to share files on-the-go. While Dropbox will require an Internet connection to view any files, there is the Favorite option for any critical files.

The Favorite option is a star icon when viewing any file. Tapping this star will mark the file as a ‘favorite’, which means that a copy of the file will be stored locally on the app. It is then viewable in the Favorites screen, which is selectable from the bottom toolbar. These favorited files can be accessed anytime from the app, no internet connection required. If there are any changes made to the file after it is marked as a favorite, it will have to be downloaded again with the ‘Update All’ button, but this process should take no more than a couple of seconds, depending on the file itself. The ‘Edit’ button allows files to be removed from Favorites if they are no longer needed.

If there is the need to add a file to Dropbox, that’s where the options are very limited. With restrictions in the iPhone SDK, Dropbox currently only allows photos or videos to be uploaded. No document files can be accessed from within the phone itself and get uploaded. But if a photo or video needs to be uploaded, Dropbox gives users the choice to use the Camera to get a new photo or video (3GS only) or choose from the Photo Library on the device. Photo and video quality can be adjusted in the Settings tab within the app.

For security issues, users can also enable a passcode lock on the app from Settings, which would be a 4-digit number to protect files from being accessed by anyone. The option to erase all data after 10 passcode failures is also there, though this is risky. Only activate it when necessary.

The app is a great way to carry around vital files that can be accessed even if there is no computer available. The uses for Dropbox are numerous, and the iPhone app only adds to the versatility of the service. With the current restrictions the iPhone, Dropbox has utilized what it can to the fullest.

Learn more about Dropbox for iPhone and iPod touch in the App Store