After 6 months there is a new firmware "update". Will this solve all the issues so liberally demonstrated by the Unleashed 22?
Of course -- not at all.
I have, after the usual troubles of firmware update which includes reinstalling the app, killing the app, resetting the 22'M devices, connecting, reconnecting, unpairing, pairing, and whatever else the non-wizards of Scamography have implemented, found that nothing works. As before.
Since I have sunk hundreds of Euros into this product, I cling to the hope that a miracle will happen and that the crappy stuff peddled by Scamography will magically work like they should from the onset.
Tested with Z30, Z fc, and Zf. The symptoms vary though. A new bug is that the app itself ever so often hangs and locks up the phone, so has to be killed. Or enters a wild loop where it over and over again asks me to pair the same camera.. When I got tired of answering this question and tried to unpair the 22'M and reconnect, the app got hung hard. I had to reset the phone.
On the Z30, the 22'M gets the 'turqoise' LED lit and all seems well. However, no accessories were detected and after I tried to unpair and repair my GL-770M, again the app locked up.
The Zf flatly refused to have anything to do with the GL-770M although for once, the Unleashed app "found" the accessory and showed a green light. However, the GPS option went to red and would never give any information. Or I got the message (on camera) it had entered 'upload mode' and the Zf thereafter locked up. In sympathy, the Unleashed also locked up.
In addition to draining the camera batteries -- as the prominent "feature" of the Unleashed 22 befrore -- the app now also drains the phone battery going from 100% to 50% in 30 minutes.
As I have concluded before: the Unleashed 22 project is the prime example of a total failure and when the company continues to sell such junk, they are in fact scamming people. Stay away. Spread the word. Get your money back before the company goes bankrupt.. Oh wait -- the company never answers e-mails and support requests.
Unleashed '22 M doesn't work with Z fc
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birnaofthenorth
- Posts: 51
- Joined: October 9th, 2023, 9:04 am
Surely, I'm tempted to do exactly that. The pile of junk is amazing. 50% were defective at arrival - new units substitued by 'Scamography'.
However, as the new units are non-working even after the latest firmware update, I can only regret my own stupidity of having trusted this nefarious company and hoped someday my outlay of hundreds of Euros would result in something useful. A pipe dream, as it turns out.
Now I have 100% failure rate.
- U20250123113638.jpg (128.7 KiB) Viewed 147770 times
However, as the new units are non-working even after the latest firmware update, I can only regret my own stupidity of having trusted this nefarious company and hoped someday my outlay of hundreds of Euros would result in something useful. A pipe dream, as it turns out.
Now I have 100% failure rate.
Trust me, this company will cease to exist soon. It is just a matter of time.birnaofthenorth wrote: ↑February 3rd, 2025, 10:42 amSurely, I'm tempted to do exactly that. The pile of junk is amazing. 50% were defective at arrival - new units substitued by 'Scamography'.
U20250123113638.jpg
However, as the new units are non-working even after the latest firmware update, I can only regret my own stupidity of having trusted this nefarious company and hoped someday my outlay of hundreds of Euros would result in something useful. A pipe dream, as it turns out.
Now I have 100% failure rate.
Many polite and helpful forum users have offered their expertise for free on this forum. Professional users have also clearly indicated that something was wrong with the design. Many times even. Advice was ignored, trivialized, and forum users were even publicly burned while they only wanted to help this project stay on track. Now almost everyone is dropping out, because this project is doomed to fail because they did not listen properly to what is needed and where wishes lie that may not be possible at all. They have been too ambitious and wanted to include all brands in one go, that does not work. You first have to get the basis 100 percent right and then include brand by brand in your portfolio, so that you can see whether you can actually guarantee that brand to the end user in terms of functionality and guaranteed work. They did not do that. They do not listen to good advice.
The end is near for this company, I can tell you that. They should have listened to good advise. They thought they knew better, but they didn't!
PapaBear out
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birnaofthenorth
- Posts: 51
- Joined: October 9th, 2023, 9:04 am
FOOLOGRAPHY STILL MAKES PURE JUNK
It's been a year since the last firmware "upgrade" 3.6 that finally killed all remaining functionality of my 22'M for Nikons. The same firmware "update" didn't kil my 18'N2 for Nikon Z6/7 entirely, as the device still -- miraculously - works and delivers GPS data, but now also drains the camera battery in a short time. If I forget to remove the camera battery, the camera wll be dead in a few hours. Sigh.
Two years ago, the Foolography 22 devices once in a while did what they were supposed to do, and enabled GPS into the EXIF data. "Once in a while" because only the Zf could achieve this, and the device was extremely buggy and required lots of camera battery removal and insertions.
Now, rumours had it a new firmware "upgrade 3.6.3 was available. So what happen?
I started by removing, then installing a new Unleashed app for my Android phone, just to play safe and start from scratch.
Then a first try with 22'M on my Z fc. The app claimed I had to *downgrade* the firmware from 3.6.1 to 3.6.3 ???? OK, I did so, and reset the device to factory setting as well. Added my trusty Qstarz GPS as an accessory, and hoped for the best. Why bother? The 22'M now drains the camera battery completely in 12 instead of 3 hours, but voraciously eats my phone battery instead. I get a turqoise LED o the 22'M, and then nothing. No GPS. I might release the camera remotely, but for that single purpose an ML-L7 could achieve the same for a tiny fraction of the price I paid for this junk from Foolography.
Same story with my GL-770M GPS, either on Z fc or Zf. Again, I get the 22'M to recognise it, the LED is turqoise, and no GPS data is ever received. Oh wait -- the phone complains it is overloaded and overrun by GPS data pushed into it by the Unleashed app!! No GPS ended where it ought to do, however, viz. to the camera ..... Then my phone battery was exhausted and I had to recharge it.
A final try on my Z30 was different because the Unleashed app locked up completely and I had to reboot my phone.
Thus, basically, over a period of 3 years we have moved from a promising product to something hopeless buggy to failure to complety junk. The customer is ripped off and the company earns money.
There is a lesson here: DO NOT EVER BUY ANYTHING FROM FOOLOGRAPHY.
If any person from the company should read this, they should be ashamed of what they have done. The 22' Unleashed is beyond junk. It is a dream becoming a nightmare.
It's been a year since the last firmware "upgrade" 3.6 that finally killed all remaining functionality of my 22'M for Nikons. The same firmware "update" didn't kil my 18'N2 for Nikon Z6/7 entirely, as the device still -- miraculously - works and delivers GPS data, but now also drains the camera battery in a short time. If I forget to remove the camera battery, the camera wll be dead in a few hours. Sigh.
Two years ago, the Foolography 22 devices once in a while did what they were supposed to do, and enabled GPS into the EXIF data. "Once in a while" because only the Zf could achieve this, and the device was extremely buggy and required lots of camera battery removal and insertions.
Now, rumours had it a new firmware "upgrade 3.6.3 was available. So what happen?
I started by removing, then installing a new Unleashed app for my Android phone, just to play safe and start from scratch.
Then a first try with 22'M on my Z fc. The app claimed I had to *downgrade* the firmware from 3.6.1 to 3.6.3 ???? OK, I did so, and reset the device to factory setting as well. Added my trusty Qstarz GPS as an accessory, and hoped for the best. Why bother? The 22'M now drains the camera battery completely in 12 instead of 3 hours, but voraciously eats my phone battery instead. I get a turqoise LED o the 22'M, and then nothing. No GPS. I might release the camera remotely, but for that single purpose an ML-L7 could achieve the same for a tiny fraction of the price I paid for this junk from Foolography.
Same story with my GL-770M GPS, either on Z fc or Zf. Again, I get the 22'M to recognise it, the LED is turqoise, and no GPS data is ever received. Oh wait -- the phone complains it is overloaded and overrun by GPS data pushed into it by the Unleashed app!! No GPS ended where it ought to do, however, viz. to the camera ..... Then my phone battery was exhausted and I had to recharge it.
A final try on my Z30 was different because the Unleashed app locked up completely and I had to reboot my phone.
Thus, basically, over a period of 3 years we have moved from a promising product to something hopeless buggy to failure to complety junk. The customer is ripped off and the company earns money.
There is a lesson here: DO NOT EVER BUY ANYTHING FROM FOOLOGRAPHY.
If any person from the company should read this, they should be ashamed of what they have done. The 22' Unleashed is beyond junk. It is a dream becoming a nightmare.
Quote: "Thus, basically, over a period of 3 years we have moved from a promising product to something hopeless buggy to failure to complety junk. The customer is ripped off and the company earns money."
Bravo: the right conclusion after 3 years of suffering, complaining, giving feedback, testing (if it works this time?), broken promises, lie upon lie, etc.
For your own sanity: throw this product away and never look back!
PapaBear out!
Bravo: the right conclusion after 3 years of suffering, complaining, giving feedback, testing (if it works this time?), broken promises, lie upon lie, etc.
For your own sanity: throw this product away and never look back!
PapaBear out!
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birnaofthenorth
- Posts: 51
- Joined: October 9th, 2023, 9:04 am
I have accepted the quirks of Nikon's Snapbridge app and use that instead. It's free, it works, and that's far more important and better than the drawbaks of relying on less accurate co-ordinates from a mobile phone, or the fact Snapbridge only can be active for a single camera at a time. In the remote districts the mobile reception is poor or non-existing, but I can add the these positions later for this particular circumstance.
The point is that they did some good things in the past, but slowly degraded into a software/hardware setup with unresolved issues, that they either could not fix or wouldn't fix (a recall of hardware is costly). If you ask me, I bet the real problem was in the design which they overlooked in the beginning, and did not anticipate enough to not make that mistake in the future. Instead of doing a total overhaul on the '22 hardware and software, they decided to build upon the current codebase without going back to the drawing board first and fix those nasty bugs and problems that critical customers had complained about for years. See the end-result when you don't get to the root of the problem. Enormous battery drain was and is caused by design flaws, probably not solvable in hardware and/or software, so you end up with a device that drains camera batteries quickly, instead of staying on the camera mounted with no battery drain whatsoever. They bragged about this as a feature, but finally this is what cost them their heads. When bragging rights turn 180 degrees and the truth is hitting you hard in the face, that is painful. Fixing the problem and replacing the hardware was too much for them to do, it would mean bankruptcy. Sadly, I think I am very close in my analysis of how it came to be. Lessons learned: you cannot build your product upon mistakes from the past, you need to solve them and correct them. If you don't, you end up with everybody abandoning the project and your customers no longer having faith in you and your product. That is because you don't solve the problems they are having for YEARS! The SAME problems over and over!
PapaBear out
PapaBear out