[thibs]

Connecting the things on internet is something that is growing big. Just having wifi is not of the future, but something that is almost from the past.

Maybe but my point was that it can be done right now. WiFi good enough but of course it can be pushed way further.

[Zygonyx]

Interesting discussion

[photoptimist]

Cellular data really isn't well suited for intensive use. The uplink is too slow and the bandwidth costs are quite high (about $10/GB). For example, realworld 4G LTE have uplink speeds of 5 to10 megabits per second (10-20 times slower than WiFi) which would take 1.5 to 3 hours to upload just 100 images at 50 MB/image. A 10-image burst would take 8-16 minutes to clear.

[Kunzite]

But...but...but... every camera must have integration with Facebook and Instagram!
Everything else is of secondary importance.

By the way, this is off-topic.

[D1N0]

Easiest to use wifi or bluetooth for integration with a phone. For sharing images you don't need a lot of bandwidth. It is not for backing up raw files. The only problem is to make integration seamless. Meaning no proprietary apps but a standard any app can use. This will come, it is inevitable. No biggy because everybody will have it.

[photoptimist]

Easiest to use wifi or bluetooth for integration with a phone. For sharing images you don't need a lot of bandwidth. It is not for backing up raw files. The only problem is to make integration seamless. Meaning no proprietary apps but a standard any app can use. This will come, it is inevitable. No biggy because everybody will have it.

Exactly!

Yet the devil is in the details of all the use cases (e.g., posting selected images to social media, live-streaming a low-res photosequence, uploading full-res images for editorial processing, backing up the data, operating the camera remotely). There are complex questions about exactly what data gets hosted on what device and which CPU does what. Seamless integration implies the camera can control the phone (e.g., push images to the phone) and the phone can control the camera (e.g., set exposure controls, ask for a web-resolution version of a raw file, etc.) so that they work together and that's a lot more complicated than a simple mass-storage device interface where the camera is a dumb device.

Ricoh may have acquired Eye-Fi for a wide range of reasons: for the chipset, backend/frontend software, patents, cloud infrastructure, engineering staff, userbase, etc. Maybe Eye-Fi had better device-cloud-integration that Ricoh did. And they may have acquired the company more so for adding WiFi & cloud features to their copiers and printers.

[RonHendriks1966]

Cellular data really isn't well suited for intensive use. The uplink is too slow and the bandwidth costs are quite high (about $10/GB). For example, realworld 4G LTE have uplink speeds of 5 to10 megabits per second (10-20 times slower than WiFi) which would take 1.5 to 3 hours to upload just 100 images at 50 MB/image. A 10-image burst would take 8-16 minutes to clear.

That will change when upgrading to 5G is coming. Currently living in a place with good reception and the right mobile gives even 4g+.

[photoptimist]

That will change when upgrading to 5G is coming. Currently living in a place with good reception and the right mobile gives even 4g+.

It looks like 5G is more intended to boost device density than to increase bandwidth per device. It may well be that "in theory" a 5G link could be as fast as a WiFi connection but it seems unlikely that network operators will configure their systems to allow a single device to monopolize 100% of the capacity of the channel. Worse, I also noticed that preliminary discussions about 5G seem to focus on downlink capacity but say nothing about uplink capacity.

And, in any case, the 5G standards aren't even defined yet so there's nothing that Pentax could build into a camera to support 5G.

[johnmflores]

Exactly!

Yet the devil is in the details of all the use cases (e.g., posting selected images to social media, live-streaming a low-res photosequence, uploading full-res images for editorial processing, backing up the data, operating the camera remotely). There are complex questions about exactly what data gets hosted on what device and which CPU does what. Seamless integration implies the camera can control the phone (e.g., push images to the phone) and the phone can control the camera (e.g., set exposure controls, ask for a web-resolution version of a raw file, etc.) so that they work together and that's a lot more complicated than a simple mass-storage device interface where the camera is a dumb device.

Ricoh may have acquired Eye-Fi for a wide range of reasons: for the chipset, backend/frontend software, patents, cloud infrastructure, engineering staff, userbase, etc. Maybe Eye-Fi had better device-cloud-integration that Ricoh did. And they may have acquired the company more so for adding WiFi & cloud features to their copiers and printers.

Yup, the devil is in the details. Apple has built an empire sweating the details. I have a Panasonic Lumix GX85 and it's implementation of WiFi, while not perfect, is a step in the right direction. I'm supposed to be able to push photos to my phone but I haven't gotten it to work yet, but I'm able to control the camera from the phone and select photos for transfer. What I'd like to see if NFC for both devices so that when I touch them together they negotiate a WiFi connection and launch the app.

What amazes me is that after decades of Apple showing how important the little details are to people, companies still don't sweat the UX.

[D1N0]

It seems Toshiba is now buying the card tech. Looks like the owners are cashing it a day. http://photorumors.com/2016/10/25/whats-going-on-with-eye-fi-technology-licensing-agreement-with-toshiba/#more-84972