[Review] Improve your smartphone photography with the ShiftCam SnapGrip kit

Smartphones these days are much more important as cameras than telephones for most people. Whether you're shooting photos and videos as a professional, recording your life through images, or just a social media enthusiast, you've probably considered camera quality before buying a phone.

The smartphone camera experience is good, but not great. Sure, the images are impressive, and the UX on a touchscreen does the best with what it has, but it's not perfect. Phones are thin, they can be slippery without a case, and tactile feedback just isn't the same as buttons.

That's exactly the problem ShiftCam wants to solve with their SnapGrip photo kit. The leading product here is a magnetically attachable camera grip and shutter, but the whole package includes a few things to improve your shots and make photography more comfortable. It's currently up for preorder, but will it be worth the cash when it launches? Let's find out.

SnapGrip

The coolest accessory in the kit is the SnapGrip. This essentially turns your phone into a full camera, complete with a bigger rechargeable battery, a grip to line up shots a bit better, and a physical button to snap a photo instead of having to fumble with your thumb on the touchscreen.

It attaches to your phone with a pretty sturdy magnet, which seems to work pretty well. Testing this on a Galaxy S21 was decent, but there's an extra magnetic ring that's included in the box that you'll probably want to use even on phones that do have some magnet support on the back. With a case it's absolutely necessary. iPhone users will be able to take advantage of the phone's native MagSafe attachments and won't need that magnet, but the SnapGrip is totally universal with that magnetic ring and the grip's Bluetooth connectivity.

It also doubles as a wireless charger, so not only do you get a better grip on your phone while shooting photos, but you can keep things recharged at the same time. That's particularly useful for outdoor shots and recording video. It's a 3200mAh battery, which isn't going to replace your existing go-to battery bank, but should be enough to stretch you through the end of the day without photography killing your battery life.

Pairing this up with your phone is as simple as pairing up Bluetooth headphones or anything else. Turn it on, hit your phone's Bluetooth settings, and link things up. The shutter button seems to register as a volume key press, which allows it to trigger most camera apps in a universal way. It's all pretty cleanly designed and could easily pass for a first-party accessory for a lot of phones.

The grip is solid and easy to hold without adding too much weight, and it fits pretty naturally on most phones. Bigger phones will feel better with it, and you can see that the Galaxy S21 was just a little smaller than the width of the SnapGrip, but when everything's secured by magnets and your hand it's generally a non-issue.

It can also be rotated into selfie-orientation if that's more your speed. It's light enough to fit in a bag to stay portable, but having the extra bulk to carry around is really the only negative here. Battery life is good, ergonomics feel great, and it's all a seamless experience.

SnapLight and SnapPod kit

We mentioned that this is actually a full kit, and while the SnapGrip is definitely the star of the show, you can also pick up two extra accessories that round out the photo experience on your phone.

The SnapLight is designed to help you illuminate your photos much better than your phone's small LED flash can handle. Phone flashes have drastically improved over the years, but they're still not great. They're small and can very easily blow out a photo, especially in very dark situations. The SnapLight will pop right to the back of your phone (or it can attach to the SnapGrip so you can use them both, if you're feeling bold) to blast light at your subject for a better shot.

This also works for selfies, since you can fold it out and rotate it a bit. Front-facing camera flashes are still pretty bad, so something like this as a ring light will make your photos look significantly better in low light. No more 100% screen brightness flashing that makes you look like a ghost.

And if you're trying to line up the perfect shot, the SnapPod is a small magnetic tripod that can also connect to both the SnapGrip and SnapLight at the same time. You can Frankenstein all of these together if the situation calls for it, which looks a little goofy but is pretty cool nonetheless.

The SnapGrip has three legs and a short range of motion to hold your phone up. It's not very tall so you're definitely going to want a table or something to help you set up a group photo, but there are some valuable use cases here like taking the SnapGrip off separately (it's still a Bluetooth camera trigger, remember?) while keeping your phone on the SnapPod to get a wide shot that you don't have to run and beat the phone's timer. You won't be carrying this one around as often, but it can still be handy.

Personally, I think the SnapPod might have been a smarter idea as a detachable magnet that could be screwed into a standard tripod for regular cameras. If you're the kind of person that uses a tripod, you probably already have a tripod, and that focused kind of accessory would just let you use your existing camera equipment to improve your smartphone shots. There's always version 2.0.

ShiftCam has let us know that they'll be making some final production tweaks for the versions of the SnapLight and SnapPod that make it to customers. They mostly seem to be related to the SnapPod legs not closing tightly and the SnapLight having a tough to open clamshell design, but neither of these things were huge negatives in our experience using pre-production samples.

Worth it?

You can lock in all three of these photography accessories for $129 through ShiftCam's pre-order campaign. It's not a cheap accessory that you can pick up on a whim, but for someone that's really into mobile photography it's easy to justify.

The SnapGrip itself is really cool. The extra battery life and general comfort improvements that you'll get are absolutely worth checking out, but the SnapLight and SnapPod are tougher sells. They feel much more laser-focused on certain people that benefit from extra lighting or tripods, but I found myself just using the grip without the accessories, especially considering how tough it is to carry all three around on top of your phone.

I'd like to see them made available un-bundled, but even as is it's hard to find something else quite as polished for your smartphone photography. And with over half a million dollars raised on ShiftCam's Kickstarter, there's clearly quite a few people that think so too.

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