After garnering 4 million downloads on iOS in five months, Finnish mobile app developer Sumoing has released a version of its photo “remixing” app Repix for Android. Refreshingly, however, this isn’t just a straight up port. The app boasts support for Samsung’s S Pen, which ships with the Korean device maker’s line of Note ‘phablets’ and tablets, enabling users to paint on their photos using a good old-fashioned stylus. That’s something that iPhone and iPad users can only dream of (well, out of the box, anyway).
Similar to the version iOS, Repix on Android offers a range of basic photo editing features, such as cropping an image or adjusting saturation, color balance and temperature. However, the app's raison d’être is its suite of brushes that let you "remix" photos by painting various effects over the original image to turn even crappy-looking photos into something palatable. We live in a post-Instagram age after all.
The Android version of Repix includes a selection of 30 brushes, ranging from animated, light, grunge, color boosting and artistic styles, according to the company. In addition, there are a number of filters and frames, and the aforementioned editing tools. Another neat trick of the app is that editing is lossless, meaning that any edits, painting or filters can be rolled back, thanks to what Sumoing is calling its real-time “Rebeca” processing engine.
Finally, as well as support for Samsung’s S Pen, Repix for Android also has built-in support for Samsung Galaxy S 4 Air View technology, so that users can see the size of each brush by hovering their finger over the photo, thus getting a quick preview before they begin fondling their soon-to-be masterpiece.
Repix’s business model is a classic freemium play. The app is free, and in addition to a selection of built-in brushes, more brush styles are available via in-app purchasing.
Regarding the app’s seemingly impressive download metrics on iOS, as we reported back in late March, a week after launch Repix had seen 1.5 million downloads. Now tallying 4 million, growth, while still impressive, has tailed off significantly — the pros and cons of a successful launch and the associated PR.
However, I’m also told that of those 4 million downloads, 24% are “active” users, while the iOS app has seen 25 million images edited. And, crucially, Repix has thus far achieved a 5% conversion rate in terms of in-app purchases.
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