With annoying regularity I get and/or see forum posts denigrating SnapBridge. As someone who encouraged Nikon to include the camera-to-smartphone connection in the first place, it always makes me grind my teeth a bit every time I get or see another of these posts.
Let’s start up front: Nikon has caused a number of the issues themselves. In an un-useful attempt to save power—Bluetooth is very low power to start with—Nikon has set the rate at which the cameras ping their willingness to connect way too high (several seconds). Much of setup delays seem to relate to this decision, as it takes a frustratingly long time before the mobile device and camera agree that they’re communicating.
Even though it’s an iOS issue, SnapBridge takes you to the wrong page in Settings in order to “forget” a previous connection when you later try to set up again (on an iOS device go to Settings > Bluetooth > [scroll to previously connected device] > i > Forget This Device).
Those two things by themselves tend to generate most of the SnapBridge complaints. There are others, but the fact that neither has been addressed by Nikon is the root of the real SnapBridge Problem: Nikon is allowing users to post their frustration and annoyance with the product, when the actual problem could be addressed by Nikon. This has continued to be true since 2016 when SnapBridge first appeared. So that's eight years of not addressing issues that Nikon could control. When a company does that—go into ignore mode—they deserve the flack that they’ll continue to get every time they try to promote the option.
Android, of course, raises other issues, which doesn’t help. But let me just say it: most of the SnapBridge Problem appears to be Nikon, or at least in Nikon’s control.
I’m not seeing the Chinese have this same issue. Acsoon, DJI, Insta360, and a host of other SE Asian companies that are using mobile to device communications all connect quicker, more reliably, and provide more robust help for the few times they don’t.
But there’s a bigger problem looming for SnapBridge now.
It started with NX Mobile Air. Once that new app was able to do camera-to-mobile-device via the airwaves, we got competing pathways with differing UI and abilities (and since I’m in complaining mode: US$4.49 a month in order to create more than one album in the memory of your mobile device is ridiculous; moreover, deleting pictures already on your device if your subscription expires is beyond ridiculous).
But now we also have Nikon Imaging Cloud (at least on the Z6 III). So we have a third way to interact with our mobile device which does yet another set of functions through the air. Gee, what’s next, NX Mobile Tether?
This reeks of both the inability to understand where a camera fits into the 21st century—just swat flies with a new app when a new user need is noticed—as well as an inability to give a 21st century user the way they want to interact with their mobile device in the first place (hint: it isn’t with a dozen apps to connect two devices). This reminds me of the old debate between science and religion about whether the solar system revolves around the Earth (camera) or the sun (mobile device). The answer is obvious to those that observe, so my conclusion is that nobody in Tokyo has poked their heads out of their offices to see what’s actually going on. Cameras revolve around the mobile device, not vice versa.
Nikon’s president recently said "“We are now in an age where smartphones and digital cameras can coexist.” [source: yomiuri.co.jp] Gee, didn’t I write that in 2007 (and pretty much ever since)? This is new to Nikon?
My worry is that Nikon feels that they’re embracing smartphones by just creating a bunch of conduits (apps) that do limited things. To make matters worse, they're not investing enough to do it right.
We really only need two apps (and many would argue that they could be combined):
- Phone controls the camera.
- Camera feeds the phone.
It’s time for Nikon to stop creating new apps and make the correct one that I told them back in 2011 that they needed.
I know I’ll get some blowback on my next comment: if doing it right requires a subscription fee, so be it. However, any subscription fee needs to be reasonable, and has to be for real R&D and improvement, not just to unlock storage we already paid for on our phone.
Nikon’s expertise started and grew in hardware engineering. Thing is, by now they should have realized that the software side is what is now unlocking physical hardware to do things that would be beyond just typical hardware improvement. That’s true of steppers (Nikon Precision), it’s true of cameras (Nikon Imaging), and it’s true in every one of Nikon’s other businesses, as well.
We no longer need a bridge, we need a direct connection.
