Live Photos is one of the exclusive features of iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus. This cool trick converts your photos into small animations by automatically recording a couple of seconds before and after you take a picture. Although it sounds gimmicky, Live Photos are actually a lot of fun to play with.
In a move that’s typical to Apple, Live Photos is not supported by any of the older iPhone models. Forget shooting these dynamic pictures on iPhone 6 and the older phones, you can’t even share them with anybody unless they have the latest phones. To be clear, it’s possible to send Live Photos to older devices but they will lose their animation and show up as regular static images. How boring!
This exclusivity is a mood dampener for one and all. Those who aren’t upgrading to iPhone 6S or 6S Plus lose out on this fun feature and those who do can’t share these fabulous photos with most of their friends. Sigh!!
So, can nothing be done? Well, actually there is a workaround, and that too a fairly simple one.
We recently learned about 2 new apps called Live GIF and Lively. Available on the AppStore, both these apps magically transform your Live Photos into the commonly used GIF and movie formats. Once that’s done, you are free to send them to any device you want (even non Apple ones). Live GIF is available for Rs. 120 and Lively is free to try with in-app purchase of Rs. 120 for unlimited exports.
Yes, we know that using another app to convert your photos before you can share them in your network them is a long-winded, not to mention tedious, process. Having to shell out money for such apps doesn’t help either. But this is the only way to break Apple’s ‘Only on the latest’ barrier. And it feels really good when you can do that!
Even if you don’t see yourself doing the drill regularly, we suggest you keep at least one of these apps handy for the times when someone asks you to forward a Live Photo they like. It’s better to spend 2 minutes on an app instead of telling them their phone isn’t hep enough to support the feature. Trust us, the looks you get aren’t good at all!
