Smartphones

A smartphone is the simplest device you can use for capturing and uploading images. They're limited in their field of view compared to 360 cameras, but are a resource that most people have access to, making large-scale collaborative efforts easy and affordable. The Mapillary team develops mobile apps for Android and iOS.

Our apps are developed to give you the best experience possible while capturing via a phone—we've implemented several methodologies to improve image quality (reducing blurs, etc.) and reduce the battery/power strain from using the camera feature for long periods of time.

💡Check out our complete Mapillary app guides to help you get setup with our apps.

💡For mounting recommendations and tips, check out our favorite smartphone mounts.

Storage on mobile phones

By default, the Mapillary mobile apps capture images with the largest resolution. Depending on your device, one image takes roughly 2–10 MB, giving you about 1000–4000 images if you have 8 GB of free storage on your phone. 

On Android devices, by default capture will be stopped when you have less than 10% free storage space left, or when your battery level is under 10%. The iOS app has no battery warning but will stop capturing at 1% free disk space by default. You can change these values in the app settings too.

Captured images will be deleted after upload, freeing up your storage space.

Keeping a copy of your images

Images are stored in the app folder and deleted after upload. Images are never stored in your camera roll/album. The only way to view them is through the app. This also means that if you want to keep copies of the images, you need to do this before you upload.

Note that the images and GPS info are saved in separate files during capture, and in the app are combined upon upload without you needing to do anything extra. However, if you plan to copy the images, you need to remember this.

For Android, try this article on Google Support to learn how to transfer files between your phone and computer. Remember to copy the GPX file (that saves the GPS data) over as well. You need to geotag the images yourself (see here for instructions).

For iPhone, there is a similar article on Apple Support about transferring files. You'll need to save your imagery to your device before you upload. 

Mobile data and costs

The Mapillary apps are 100% free and do not require any data plan or cell connectivity when taking images as they use your phone’s GPS to determine the location of the images. The app defaults to uploading your images when you are connected to Wi-Fi, not using your mobile data. If you have unlimited data or are not concerned about data transfer costs, you can turn on uploading using mobile data in app settings.