Spectre Camera vs fastbackward
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Spectre Camera
This app uses AI to create stunning long exposure photographs, making it easy to capture professional-quality shots. Remove crowds, create light trails, and achieve silky smooth water effects effortlessly.
- AI-powered long exposures
- Crowd removal
- Light trail creation
- Silky water effects
- Live Photos and video support
- Automatic scene detection
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Apple iPhone App of the Year, 2019 Introducing Spectre, from the makers of Halide, one of the top camera apps in the App Store. Spectre uses AI to help you make amazing long exposure photographs. Spectre can remove crowds, turn city streets into rivers of light, make waterfalls look like paintings, and much more. Until now, it was difficult to take long exposures: from keeping the camera steady to guessing the amount of light you need. Spectre takes care of all of that! WHAT YOU CAN DO • MAKE CROWDS DISAPPEAR: Spectre helps take photos of crowded, touristy places. Simply set a medium or long duration and take a shot to erase the crowd from a location. Capture the those special moments like you remember them. • RIVERS OF LIGHT: At night, AI scene detection automatically switches modes to draw beautiful light trails, for stunning nighttime city photography or light painting. • GORGEOUS WATER: Capture waterfalls, ocean waves, fountains and more with beautiful ghostly water. LIVE PHOTOS AND VIDEO Spectre’s intelligent computational shutter takes hundreds of shots over the span of a few seconds, and saves them in an accompanying live photo. That means you can pick a different frame as your photo, apply live-photo effects, and even use the long exposure as a live-wallpaper! ENDLESS SMARTS Spectre is a packed with powerful technology from by the team that brought you Halide. From machine learning-based scene detection to computer vision aided image stabilization, Spectre is jammed full of impressive technologies to get the best possible image. DESIGNED FOR HUMANS Spectre is meticulously designed. Its dark UI is gentle on the eyes when you shoot at night. Gorgeous glowing highlights infuse it with a unique style. Custom typefaces and iconography combined with unique, smooth controls make it as tactile and delightful as an actual physical camera. Like its sister app Halide, the app is easily usable with one hand, even on the largest iPhones. HIGH-TECH SHOWCASE Build with the latest tech, Spectre isn't just a long exposure camera — it’s the cutting edge technology showcase of one of the App Store’s foremost camera apps, Halide. Here’s just a few of the latest technologies that we use in Spectre: - DCI-P3 Wide Color Pipeline - Live Photos - Metal Graphics Acceleration - Tripod Detection - Siri & Shortcuts - AI Stabilization - Machine Learning & CoreML - Computer Vision COMPATIBILITY: Spectre’s smart Automatic Scene Detection requires iOS 12. AI-based stabilization features are available on iPhone 6S and later.* For the best experience, we recommend iPhone 8 or later. On iPhone 6, Spectre captures in lower resolution. ABOUT US We’re Ben and Sebastiaan, two friends living in the San Francisco Bay Area that love building fantastic apps for photography. We hope you love Spectre! We’d love your feedback to make it even better or any reports of bugs you run into. You can always contact us directly via email: support@halide.cam, on our Twitter: @halidecamera or Instagram: @halideapp Don’t forget to share your amazing results by tagging them with #SpectreShot so we can share them on our growing social media accounts!
fastbackward
Relive past memories with your photos. This app resurfaces pictures taken on this day in previous years, helping you recall significant life events and see your personal growth. It also displays photos on a map using EXIF data and can show random memories if no photos exist for the date.
- Resurfaces photos from previous years
- Displays photos on a map using EXIF data
- Excludes screenshots from memories
- On-device processing for privacy
- Shows random memories if no photos for the date
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Have you ever wondered what you were doing on this day last year? Or the year before? What about the year before that? With fastbackward you'll not only know, but have your photos to remind you, too. Taking photos is great, but looking at those photos is where the real fun begins. Your iPhone takes stunning photos but it needs fastbackward to surface the most important photos at the right time. Your iPhone is full of photos but they're a jumbled mess in the Photos app. What makes fastbackward so valuable is the way it surfaces photos you took today, but in years past. You'll see your kids growing up as well as any big life events that happened on this day, too. Didn't take a photo on this day? Fastbackward can show you a random memory instead. As well as showing you your photos and jogging your memory, fastbackward will also use your photos' EXIF data to plot where you took them on a map. You'll never wonder where you took your favourite landscape photo ever again. Features include: - The ability to exclude screenshots from your memories. - Privacy. Because your photos are hugely personal, fastbackward doesn't upload any of them to the internet. All of the processing is carried out on your device, right where it should be. - EXIF data used to display a map of where you took your photos.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: fastbackward at 100% against Spectre Camera's 46%. fastbackward also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.3) and update cadence (every 3 weeks vs every 3 months). Spectre Camera's advantage is ratings volume (2.4K vs 1) and iOS requirement (16.0 vs 18.6). On price, 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
Both are free to download. Spectre Camera sells 1 one-off in-app purchase and fastbackward sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
fastbackward holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Spectre Camera has 2.4K ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 46% of Spectre Camera's written reviews are positive against 100% of fastbackward's.
Spectre Camera ships an update every 3 months, fastbackward every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 14, 2026 and October 7, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Spectre Camera | fastbackward |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.3 (2.4K ratings) | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 45.8% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 2.4K — better | 1 |
| Update frequency | Every 3 months | Every 3 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Paid | Free with in-app purchases — better |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 — better | 18.6 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 12 MB | 2 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Lux Optics Incorporated | Maximilian Krauss |
Customer experience
Spectre Camera
fastbackward
Bugs and requests
Spectre Camera
Reported bugs
3 issues- Crashes and freezes on some devices
- Compatibility issues with older iPhones
- Focusing and stabilization problems
Requested features
5 requests- Longer exposure time options
- More manual control over settings
- Raw image format support
- Apple Watch remote support
- Improved low-light performance
fastbackward
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Spectre Camera
- Spectre Pro$4.99
fastbackward
- fastbackward Pro$1.99
Questions
Is Spectre Camera free?
Is fastbackward free?
Which has better reviews, Spectre Camera or fastbackward?
Do Spectre Camera or fastbackward have ads?
Which is updated more often, Spectre Camera or fastbackward?
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