Samsung SmartCam

The app lets you monitor and administer your camera’s, and it works OK for this. But there could be some minor improvements, that would make this app great!. 1. Let the app run in the orientation of your device. If I am in Landscape, put the menu in Landscape. I shouldn’t have to keep moving my device to portrait for the menu, wait for the video, and then move to landscape. My iPad is sitting on a stand, this is extremely inconvenient. 2. Allow us to see multiple cameras at one time. Maybe support camera grouping for this. 3. While viewing one camera, allow us to slide left or right to go to the next or previous camera. Don’t force us to go back to the menu to chose a different camera. If there is something happening, we need to get to the other camera’s quickly. 4. Just because the internet goes down, I should not lose the ability to view my cameras. They are on my network. If I’m on my network, I should be able to view my cameras. But they are not available on the local network if you don’t have internet access. So, this makes them useless for security. The only changes to the app for the past several years has been the support of additional cameras.

Not sure why other folks are having issues. The app works as designed. Are there limits? Sure, just understand what they are and set your expectations. Otherwise, invest in a different solution after you do the research. With the current system I can administer all six cameras as expected. I'm able to monitor each camera with varying results depending on network performance which depends on cell service or local ISP and how well WiFi is performing on your home LAN/WAN... your mileage on may vary. Again, can't blame the app for a poor local network or signal - if you can get a good connection from the camera all the way through the chain to your mobile device then all is good. Issues are really around poor WiFi performance of the cameras themselves... Had to invest in additional access points to boost my home WiFi performance to get reliable connections to each camera. Now that everything is tuned for optimal performance the whole system works like a charm! It's all about the network, from camera to App.

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This app has iPhone 5S - specific error. When iPhone 5S is on cellular connection only (no wi-fi), app works only in relay mode. This means you can not access videos stored on camera's SD card. Apparently, in iPhone-5S version, app checks if you are on cell connection only, and switches app to work in relay mode only. I was able to prove it using this setup: 2 identical iPhone 5S, placed next to each other. Step 1: disable wifi in both phones, launch SmartCam on both phones (one by one) - and you will get relay mode only. Close apps on both phones. This step just confirms that app on either phone does not work. Step 2: Enable WiFi Hotspot on one phone, disable cell reception on the second phone, enable WiFi on the second phone and connect to the hotspot created by 1st phone. Launch SmartCam app and you will see that it works in full mode, w/o relay. Support is not helping, ther official story is that Relay mode is used only if there is no enough bandwidth. The experiment above shows that it is not true. Bottom line: if you have iPhone 5S, DO NOT buy these camearas. You will not be able to use them as intended.

While I do not dispute others' posts relating their poor experience with this app, I'm not understanding it. I've used it for about 2 weeks and found it to be trouble free. Once installed, it automatically incorporated the login data from Samsung's previous app already installed on my iPhone, and it easily connected to all my Samsung Smartcams. Although I was forced to upgrade to this new app, l am glad I did. I like this app much better because it displays in higher definition and is easier to flip through all my connected cameras. I'm using an iPhone 7. Maybe there is something about that that improves performance. Now, if only Samsung would get their PC Windows web site fixed. Limiting access to Internet Explorer is really lame.

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1. Cam has audio detection event trigger. The only audio trigger that I have observed is that produced when the camera itself switches from normal color to infrared (night), which can happen several times each day. 2. I receive event notifications. When accessing the camera I can only see the current live view. Although it has a list of recent and past events, I can almost never view them. It first says, “Connecting...”. Then after 15 seconds or so it says, “Access has failed. Please try again in a moment. (simultaneous connection/network unstable)”. If Samsung cared, they could have engineers accommodate/adjust for unusual network conditions. ALL the other apps on my all my devices do just fine accessing other remotely connecting devices. 3. I bought this cam from Costco. Beware of special deals lined up on the left as you walk in the door.