Polaroid vs Bothways
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Polaroid
This app enhances your analog photography experience by connecting to Polaroid cameras, offering advanced shooting modes, and providing a high-resolution scanner for your physical prints. You can also print photos from your phone onto Polaroid film and curate a digital gallery of your memories.
- Connect and control Polaroid cameras
- Advanced shooting modes (Portrait, Double Exposure)
- High-resolution Polaroid scanner
- Print phone photos to Polaroid film
- Create photo grids and collages
- Digital scrapbook for memories
Read full descriptionHide full description
Unlock the full creative power of Polaroid — the film, the camera and the community. GET INSPIRED Join photography challenges and capture beautiful imperfection to win prizes and expand your knowledge with Polaroid cameras and photography. CONNECT YOUR CAMERA Link your Now+, OneStep+, I-2 or Flip to unlock additional features like: - Portrait Mode - Double Exposure - Self Timer - Aperture Priority - Tripod Mode - Light Painting - Manual Mode HIGH-RES POLAROID SCANNER Use our in-built scanner to scan, store and share high quality digital copies of your Polaroid pictures. Works for i-Type, 600, SX-70, and Spectra film. PRINT POLAROID PICTURES Load photos from your phone into the Polaroid app and place it on top of the Lab and your favorite memories will be printed as beautifully imperfect Polaroid pictures. Or create grids and collages of two, three, four, six or nine frames to share with others. CURATE YOUR GALLERY Once scanned, create your own digital scrapbook of your favorite memories.
Bothways
Record video once and get both landscape and portrait versions simultaneously. Smart face tracking ensures subjects stay centered in the vertical frame. Ideal for creators posting to multiple platforms without re-editing.
- Dual simultaneous export
- Smart face tracking
- 4K & 1080p recording
- Pinch-to-zoom
- Cinema overlays
- Flexible output formats
- Front & back camera support
Read full descriptionHide full description
Record once. Export twice. A true creator's camera. Bothways captures video from your iPhone camera and simultaneously writes two professionally formatted files: a 16:9 landscape version and a 9:16 portrait version, with a live Picture-In-Picture preview of the alternate format — both encoded in real-time using hardware-accelerated H.264. The portrait crop isn't a dumb center-slice. Bothways uses Apple's Vision framework to detect faces in every frame and smoothly tracks the subject, keeping them centered in the vertical frame. No face visible? It gracefully falls back to a center crop. Built for creators who post to YouTube and TikTok from the same shoot. Built for filmmakers who need both formats without re-editing. Built for anyone who's tired of choosing between landscape and portrait before they hit record. KEY CAPABILITIES - Dual simultaneous export — real-time AVAssetWriter, not a post-process re-encode - Smart face tracking — Vision framework detection with smooth EMA tracking - 4K & 1080p — shoot in up to 3840x2160 at 24, 30, or 60 fps - Pinch-to-zoom — smooth digital zoom up to 10x with live indicator - Cinema overlays — optional vignette and film grain effects on the live preview - Flexible output — export as .MOV or .MP4 with configurable bitrate - Front & back camera — works with both, including mirrored front camera - Metal GPU pipeline — hardware-accelerated crop, scale, and encode - Full audio — stereo AAC in both output files - One-tap save — both files go straight to Photos No subscriptions. No watermarks. No cloud upload. No accounts. Everything runs on-device.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Polaroid at Free against Bothways's $4.99. Polaroid also leads on ratings volume (19K vs 1). Bothways's advantage is review sentiment (100% vs 61%) and update cadence (every 2 days vs every 3 weeks). On rating, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Polaroid is free to download; Bothways costs $4.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.9 for Polaroid against 5.0 for Bothways. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Polaroid has 19K ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 61% of Polaroid's written reviews are positive against 100% of Bothways's.
Polaroid ships an update every 3 weeks, Bothways every 2 days. The most recent releases landed on November 4, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Polaroid | Bothways |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $4.99 |
| Rating | 4.9 (19K ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 61.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 19K — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 weeks | Every 2 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 215 MB | 1 MB |
| Age rating | 12+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Polaroid | James Martin |
Customer experience
Polaroid
Bothways
Bugs and requests
Polaroid
Reported bugs
4 issues- Compatibility issues with newer iPhone models
- Printing problems with Polaroid Lab device
- Unreliable Bluetooth connection with cameras
- Scanning feature not working consistently
Requested features
4 requests- Self-timer option in manual mode
- Ability to customize AR photo display
- Quicker access to frequently used settings
- Improved photo library organization
Bothways
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Polaroid
No in-app purchases
Bothways
No in-app purchases









