You’ve heard my speech from the soapbox: Backup your iPhone photos. A little device called Fotofami couldn’t make it easier.
In fact, it’s shaped like a little thin box that will travel well in a pocket. It works by getting to know the faces of family and friends in those pictures while fiercely defending them from the reach of hackers.
The Fotofami is a photo-and-video-only hard drive that is MFI certified by Apple that uses deep learning visual AI to recognize faces to sort and organize iPhone and iPad photos by expressions, emotions, genders, and ages.
All photos and videos get encrypted for security and won’t be uploaded to the internet unless you elect to share them with your social media. A passcode or fingerprint authentication prevents others from accessing your photos.
Accessory companies offer a variety of solutions to backup smartphone photos. There are cords that sync your devices to your computer, mini drives that plug into your phone and cloud-based apps that store your photos for a monthly fee.
Photo: FotoFami
With Fotofami, the pictures go straight on the device. There is no cloud service so if you lose your Fotofami, you lose your pictures (multiple backups, including good old-fashioned analog prints, should be part of preserving your memories from the very start).
Fotofami comes in two sizes, 64GB, which will hold about 50,000 photos or 520 minutes of video, and 128GB, which doubles that capacity. All files are saved at the original quality and are a quick and handy way to free up space on your device.
The Fotofami GI (64GB) is available for pre-order on the product’s website for $79. The larger capacity G2 (128GB) currently sells for $119. Shipping is expected to begin at the end of the month.
Think of it as a digital shoe box that organizes the pictures for you by date and people. You can add names and event information to preserve context. Plug it into your phone and it becomes an album that plays a slide show with music.
