TinEye Blog » Blog Archive » TinEye Android Beta!

TinEye Android Beta!

I am sure that if you are like us, you have been dreaming of a TinEye android application for quite some time now. Our beta release today won’t really help you unless – like us – you are a Nexus One user! If you are, well, rejoice: the TinEye Android Beta is here. It is a rough beta as we are just getting it out to do some testing. It is not ready for prime time. It may or may not work. It may or may not crash your phone. But when it works, well… it is magic. We actually just built it for ourselves but we don’t mind sharing.

Have you ever run across a photograph in a magazine, on a poster or on those giant advertising billboards at the airport and wondered where it came from? or who shot it? Now you can simply whip out your Nexus One, snap a photo and get your TinEye results (if we have them!).

So what you need to know:

TinEye Android Beta searches the current TinEye index when you perform a search. There are a number of things you should be aware of:

Do not install it if you are using a Samsung Galaxy S! It will hard crash your device and you will need to remove your battery to restart it.
It does not work well with rotated images. You need to take your photograph in portrait mode and avoid rotations/skewed shots.
It only works with Android v2.1 and later. And has only been tested on the HTC Nexus One running Android v2.3.3 and the HTC Evo running Android v2.1-update1 and v2.2.

How to install the TinEye Android Beta:

On your phone go to Settings > Applications.
Enable “Unknown Sources” This is required because during the beta, the app is not being installed from the Android Market Place.
Install TinEye for Android
Go to the browser downloads, either from the Android pull down menu or by going to the phone browser menu > more > downloads, and click on TinEye.apk to install the app
After the app is installed, be sure to disable Unknown Sources.

We would appreciate your feedback so that we can work on the next release. So please let us know of any bugs or drop us a line to send us some hugs! We are already working on a number of improvements including:

Options to use the camera zoom and flash
The option to upload an image from your phone image gallery
The option to log into your TinEye account from the app
Using the camera in landscape mode.

To uninstall the app:

Go to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications > TinEye
Choose Force Stop if the button is enabled
Choose Uninstall

Enjoy!

UPDATE: MAY 31/2011. Thanks TinEye fans for your testing and feedback. Much appreciated. We now have a new release Version 1.1 which includes a bug fix where the photo taken with a phone camera was uploaded to TinEye in landscape mode instead of portrait mode in some phones. This release also works on the following devices:

HTC Desire HD 2.2.1
HTC Desire 2.2
HTC Nexus One 2.2-2.3.4
HTC Evo v2.1-update and 2.2
LG GT540 CyanogenMod7
Milestone CyanogenMod7 2.3.3
Motorola Droid 2.3.3

As always we would love to hear from you! Say hi!

BROWSE / IN TIMELINE
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« Using TinEye on a mobile device
» TinEye Android

COMMENTS / 25 COMMENTS

[...] just released a beta version, and they add tens of millions of images to their database every month. There are so many [...]

Tineye | Pockets of Change May 04 11 at 5:29 am

[...] fans: we released an update to our TinEye Android App. We first want to thank you all for the great feedback you have been sending our way. Much [...]

TinEye Blog » Blog Archive » TinEye Android Jun 01 11 at 12:21 pm

Works great on my Milestone with Cyanogen7 (Android 2.3.3)

C. Apr 29 11 at 11:59 am

Thanks for testing. Good to know! We will add this to our list of devices for which this beta works. Much appreciated.

Leila Boujnane Apr 29 11 at 1:58 pm

Glad to see tinEye on android! My N1 is broken but i loaded your apk to my Archos 101…it has 2.2.1 but when the camera is sellected it just shows the pin wheel with no progress

Conor May 01 11 at 7:51 am

iPhone Version Next !!!
Please Hurry ! ;)

frank May 03 11 at 2:48 pm

works flawless on my HTC Desire HD (Android 2.2.1) as well

Settings to turn off the sound would be great though ;)

biz May 05 11 at 5:41 am

Great to see progress on the mobile front. I’ve been waiting for this since I discovered Tineye :)

Pity it doesn’t work on the Galaxy S though, I’d really like to try it out!

Tom May 05 11 at 12:46 pm

@connor did it end up doing anything at all? or just crashed your phone? can you send us an email at hi at tineye.com please. Thanks for testing.

Leila Boujnane May 05 11 at 2:41 pm

@biz thanks for testing! If you set your phone into silent or vibrate mode there will be no shutter sound. Let me know if that works for you because that’s kind of odd!

Leila Boujnane May 05 11 at 2:42 pm

@Tom we are working on fixing the problem with the Gaaxy S as we have a lot of TinEye fans who use that phone. We will post an update in the coming weeks and I hope you will be able to give it a try then.

Leila Boujnane May 05 11 at 2:43 pm

Works perfectly on my LG GT540 running CyanogenMod 7. And unlike Google Goggles, TinEye is actually finding matches on things.

In some cases, though, I have to mess around a bit with the angle until it works. It’d be nice if TinEye offered some potential results even when it’s not 100 % confident in them.

Loginer May 08 11 at 10:55 am

It’s working fine on my HTC Desire.

It would be great if everything was done inside the application without redirecting to the TinEye website.

Gilles May 11 11 at 5:12 pm

I have a SAMSUNG Nexus S. I have installed the software and it works great in landscape mode. Initially, it did not make any sound when I took the picture. Now, it makes a very loud snapshot sound when I take the picture.
How can I mute the snapshot sound ?

Thanks for your attention !
David

David L Modney May 17 11 at 8:27 pm

Works well with Motorola Droid with 2.3.3.

Zach May 19 11 at 1:16 pm

Works brilliantly on my HTC Desire (stock, unrooted, unbranded). That’s probably not a surprise though since the Desire is very similar to the Nexus One.

Apata May 20 11 at 2:25 pm

(The Desire is 2.2 by the way)

Apata May 20 11 at 2:28 pm

Great idea – but needs to take the user to a mobile-friendly end page.

I echo the calls for silent operation, even when the phone is not set to silent.

Otherwise, works well on my HTC Desire HD.

Andy Mabbett May 28 11 at 11:08 am

Well it works on my Galaxy S :)….oh no just I wrote this it went completly black and unresponsive. I got one photo though.

Maybe you could include result in the app in the future?

aron May 31 11 at 8:40 pm

Works on my HTC Incredible. Android 2.2 Thank!

AJ Bell Jun 15 11 at 8:37 pm

I’m very excited at the prospect of a TinEye app for Android. My uni lecturer only just introduced me to your website and I’ve found it very helpful. Good luck with your testing!
@ireadlots
(a Samsung Galaxy S2 user)

@ireadlots Aug 20 11 at 3:29 am

First I see that I’m necrothreading.
@ Gilles
LOL ok so you want a cache of over 2 billion photos stored somewhere on your phone? I don’t believe they have 1Tb Memory cards just yet. If they do I’m sure your phone doesn’t support it correctly.

P.S. I’ll join beta with the sound thingy is removed.

Neo210 Sep 24 11 at 9:54 pm