The AI-powered Alice Camera has had a pretty long journey. Launched in 2020, it promised to bring real photography to your smartphone with a larger Micro Four Thirds sensor. In 2021, the company took to Kickstarter to fund and sell devices.
In May last year, we got to see a bit of a hands-on with a working Alice Camera, but there was still no real answer when the rest of the world could get hold of them. Now, they’ve finally announced the shipping dates.
What is Alice Camera?
Alice is essentially a cut-down camera that attaches to your phone. It lacks many of the features that you typically find in cameras, such as a display. The idea was that your smartphone would make up for those shortcomings. In theory, it’s an awesome idea.
Smartphones today contain more computing power than it took to land humans on the moon. So why not have them do some of the heavy lifting? The smartphone powers the camera’s AI features and provides us with a huge touchscreen display. A display bigger than that built into any Micro Four Thirds camera on the market today.
It offers 4K at 30fps and 1080p at 60fps. So, you’re not going to get those super high frame rates you might have been hoping for. But the 11-megapixel Micro Four Thirds sensor allows you to get a shallow depth of field without having to fake it with dodgy blur in post. Not to mention improved low-light sensitivity over tiny smartphone sensors.
When is it shipping?
The company has issued a statement stating that the cameras will be shipping over the next few months. The release is being staggered, so different regions will see their cameras arrive at different times. Here’s how the list looks right now.
Cameras for the UK will begin shipping from 15th July 2024.
Cameras for US, Japan, EU, Australia are scheduled to start shipping from 15th August 2024.
Cameras for Canada, France and Rest of the World are scheduled to start shipping from Sept 2024.
It’s taken four years from the initial announcement to finally shipping out the cameras. And while it’s definitely going to be an improvement for many people over their smartphone’s native cameras, is it too little, too late?
Will it stand the test of time?
Micro Four Thirds cameras – well, Panasonic – has come along way in the last four years. The recent announcement of the GH7 blows pretty much every other MFT camera out of the water. It shoots 4K at up to 120fps and even records ProRes RAW internally. Panasonic also finally figured out how phase-detect autofocus works, and they’ve implemented it extremely well, too.
Sure, there’s a bit of a cost difference between Alice and the Panasonic GH7, but will MFT shooters be willing to deal with the compromises in 2024? There’s also the fact that this has been tried before. Sony’s tried it, and even Olympus tried it (long before they became OM Digital).
I really would like to see Alice succeed. I’ve always loved the concept of a camera with a larger sensor that I can bolt onto my smartphone for certain situations. So, hopefully, Alice will succeed where Sony, Olympus and others have failed.
Of course, novel smarthphone-ish cameras that looked quite good have failed miserably in the past, too. One such example is the Light L16. This is now widely regarded as one of the biggest camera flops in photography’s history.
So, I guess we’ll see. While many embrace new and unusual technology, many more seem to resist change. So, I look forward to reading reviews from real customers once these start getting into people’s hands. And hopefully, the reviews will be positive.
Price and Availability
The Alice Camera is not currently available to pre-order. Well, it is, sort of. They have a waitlist on the website. Once you get to the top of that waitlist, you have the opportunity to pre-order. But there’s still no mention of a price on the website.
As far as shipping, existing buyers will see their cameras ship according to the list further up. As to when they’ll become more readily available and we can just hit up Amazon or B&H and buy one is anybody’s guess.
