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If you need this accessary, you might do better with a dedicated camera.
I would agree with you if the person needed this accessory frequently. I have a 4 Canon camera with some very expensive L series lenses and a pair of $500 Canon speedlite strobes. That set up is one end of the spectrum and it can take amazing photos with beautiful lighting effects. The built in flash on any smartphone is the other end of the spectrum. I see this off camera flash as a very logical and inexpensive middle ground as it will be much more portable and convenient than lugging around a full DSLR w/ strobes while still providing a way to get better lighting effects than just relying on the built in flash. I will probably pick one of these up as soon as they are available.
 
My dogs will be happy to hear I’ll now have better lighting to take their pictures!!

The downside is they’ll be in make-up longer.
 
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For many people, their cell phone is also their only camera. Adding this Flash makes most photos “better”. Relatively few photos are made worse by the addition of an off-camera flash

And at $50 with a single charge being enough for 10,000 flashes - this will improve many Christmas, family gatherings, vacation, Graduation and other get together occasions. I see nothing but good from this
 
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Yes right.
Of course Apple's own future setup might compensate such lag easily by shutter delay (e.g some 100ms) or use their ultrafast AirDrop based peer-to-peer protocol (rate approx. 1.3Gbps!). They might enhance their Camera App to support such professional needs. Let's wait and see..

Maybe a small IR dongle on the phone to trigger the flash. I think that's how the pro systems work.
 
Yes right.
Of course Apple's own future setup might compensate such lag easily by shutter delay (e.g some 100ms) or use their ultrafast AirDrop based peer-to-peer protocol (rate approx. 1.3Gbps!). They might enhance their Camera App to support such professional needs. Let's wait and see...

AirDrop is ultrafast in that it has a lot of bandwidth, it isn't necessarily going to reduce lag.

If I pick up a full 12TB hard drive and walk down the street with it to my friend's house 5 minutes away... I've achieved a rate of around 320Gbps. .

UWB? That might be able to reduce lag.
 
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I think they corded it to reduce any lag in activating the flash. There's going to be some lag with Bluetooth.

It's actually possible to sync flash with Bluetooth. Profoto C1 does it and also has a pre-flash sequence to get a autoexposure similar as the TTL of conventional cameras.
 
It's actually possible to sync flash with Bluetooth. Profoto C1 does it and also has a pre-flash sequence to get a autoexposure similar as the TTL of conventional cameras.

Sure but it doesn't seem to be the route Anker took. It's still an unreleased product so we may not know the whole story.
 
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