Brainstorming BB10: Improving the Pictures app

Recently I was asked on Twitter for one thing that I absolutely dislike about the BlackBerry Z10. At the time I said the display because, truth be told, I really do want a BlackBerry device with a bigger display. Some time in the near future, that won't be a problem. However the question itself prompted me to think of other things I dislike and the only thing I really came up with isn't bound to simply the BlackBerry Z10 but rather a BlackBerry 10 issue. That issue is the pictures app. 

I don't take a lot of photos with my device, and more often than not, I'm taking photos of the devices instead, but when I do take photos I'd like to be able to access them quickly and easily for sharing on Twitter, Facebook or uploading them to Flickr or whatever. That's one area where I think BlackBerry 10 could certainly improve. The pictures app right now while making use of the sharing menu, having a built-in editor, slideshow option, allowing for output to TV, and organization of albums still feels slightly off and not really productive.

Often times, I go looking for a picture and seemingly can never really find what I'm look for and because of that I tend to use the File Manager app more for dealing with pictures than the actual pictures app itself. I think the majority of my issues come from the fact there are three tabs to choose from: Recent, Camera and Albums. Maybe it's just me but I always end up going to the Recent tab, not finding what I'm really looking for and getting a bit frustrated. The Recent tab only loads 32 images and the area below that only shows you recently viewed images, because of that it tends to look a bit cluttered up and then you end up seeing duplicates of stuff you're already looked at from the top section.

If you want to see all of your images you have to flip over to the Camera tab. In there, you'll find images organized by month and there really isn't a 'cap' on how many it can hold / you can view in any one month. It's a nicer way to look at it all but depending on how your brain works, you might not even think to actually look there because you may already be frustrated from looking at the Recent tab, not finding what you needed and have moved on to the File Manager app.

I don't think I'm alone here either because after having spoken with several people on the CrackBerry team, this is typically what happens to them as well. Plus, in general conversation with a BlackBerry employee shortly after the BlackBerry 10 launch, I recall them having issues with finding their pictures as well and remarking about the viewing limit in the Recent tab.

So, how do I think it should be fixed? Well, there are a number of ways I can think of. A reorganization of the tabs would be one way. Another would be the removal of the Recent tab altogether as there wasn't really a need to even see it and that way you get to see all the images available to you that you wish to take action on. Those are all really simple fixes but we all know that BlackBerry has the power of TAT behind them and can come up with something more intriguing.

How about the ability to tag photos with people's names, events or make use of the geotagging feature already implemented? Add in a search feature so that I can search out tagged photos. For example, if I want to find a photo of Kevin and it's been tagged, I can just search for Kevin and it pulls in all his tagged photos or if I want to search for all photos taken at BlackBerry Live or in Orlando, Florida, I can search for those things.

Wrap it all up in a beautiful TAT UI that we've seen numerous demos of. Maybe even have it optionally scrub images for faces and link them to contacts, making all those photos easily found through their contact entry. Even the ability to create albums on the device would be a good start, considering it seems the only way to make an album that I'm aware of is to use BlackBerry Link.

These are just some quick ideas from my brain. How do you guys feel about the pictures app? Can you relate to some of the issues I noted? If so, what are some improvements you all would suggest be implemented into the app?

I certainly wouldn't go so far as to call the pictures app basic, it really does have a ton of options in there, but again I don't really feel productive using it and feel it could be improved to provide a better experience. If I can't have a better pictures app to use, can someone at the very least please stop the Android apps from caching images into my pictures library? I'd certainly settle on that.