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Camera360 Lite became Google Play’s No. 2 photo app in under a month

The app Camera360 Lite may be only a month old, but it’s already climbed the charts to the second rated free photography app among the trending section of the Google Play Store. So why are Android users readily downloading the newcomer?

Camera360 Lite is designed for simplicity and speed. The entire program is only 5.2 MB, which means the app loads quickly and doesn’t cause a big strain on the battery.

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Despite the smaller size, the app’s developers worked to optimize the app’s 100 photo filters to render them at a high quality. The program is designed to run on mobile devices with varying screen sizes, from 320 by 240 to 2,560 by 1,440.

Those 100 filters are available in real time, which means users can shoot with them instead of just adding them after the fact. The filters are divided into 13 different categories, including a beauty camera for selfies and a foodie set. The Lite version also still includes a few tools for blemish correction. According to developers, sharing is quick too with one-touch social media options.

The app is part of a larger Camera360 family, developed by PinGuo, Inc., which across multiple apps has over 700 million users. The original Camera360 offers more effects and features, while the Lite version is created for speed and simplicity. According to the company, the Lite version was developed in response to the trend of advanced effects being traded off for bigger, slower apps. Since the app was released on August 13, the company has released a new update every week.

According to the Google Play Store, the Lite app has between 500,000 and 1 million downloads, despite being less than a month old. The free app, for Android 4.03 and up, currently has a 4.1-star user rating.

Hillary K. Grigonis
Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…
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