Insta360 Adapter for Android

In this review, we will con­sid­er an adapter that allows you to con­nect the Insta360 One cam­era to devices with the Android oper­at­ing sys­tem.

Ini­tial­ly, the cam­era was intend­ed only for devices with the iOS oper­at­ing sys­tem, but after a while the man­u­fac­tur­er released an adapter for Android devices.

An overview of the cam­era itself can be read here.

The adapter is not includ­ed with the cam­era, so you need to pur­chase it sep­a­rate­ly.

It can be pur­chased on the offi­cial web­site, but the cost of deliv­ery makes the final cost quite high. In addi­tion, at the moment the adapter for devices with USB Type‑C is not avail­able. In addi­tion, they do not ship to Ukraine. Ukraini­ans can buy an adapter in the local Fly Tech­nol­o­gy store, but at the moment they also do not have them in stock. On Gearbest, the adapter is not avail­able at the time of writ­ing the review.

Now you can order on Aliex­press, but when I ordered, there was no such pos­si­bil­i­ty, so I ordered on Taobao, using the ser­vices of the already well-known and trust­ed inter­me­di­ary Yoy­buy (in any case, it turns out cheap­er than on Ali).

Here is the price dif­fer­ence (the first screen­shot is an order on the offi­cial web­site of Insta360, and the sec­ond one is on Taobao through an inter­me­di­ary):

For those who do not want to spend mon­ey and pur­chase an adapter sep­a­rate­ly, I will give a small life hack. The cam­era can be con­nect­ed to the phone using an OTG adapter and a micro-USB cable. It is worth not­ing 2 points: the appli­ca­tion sees the cam­era only if it is con­nect­ed via a short micro-USB cable; The OTG adapter has USB 3.0, I don’t know if it will work with adapters with USB 2.0.

There is also an impor­tant nuance: when con­nect­ed using a pro­pri­etary adapter, the cam­era does not dis­charge the bat­tery of the device to which it is con­nect­ed, and when con­nect­ed using my method, it will dis­charge it.

There are 2 ver­sions of this adapter: for devices with Micro-USB and USB Type‑C.

Pack­age

Equip­ment

The adapter is made of pleas­ant to the touch soft-touch plas­tic.

Com­pat­i­ble phones with OTG sup­port, Android ver­sion 5.1 or lat­er, at least 2GB of RAM and one of the fol­low­ing proces­sors: Snap­drag­on 600/800, MTK Helio X10/X20/X25/X30, Exynos 7410/8890 or Kirin 9xx.

Com­pat­i­ble with the fol­low­ing smart­phones:

Huawei: P9, Mate 9, Mate10, Mate 10 Pro, Hon­or 8 Lite;
Sam­sung: Note 8, S8, S7, S7 Edge, Note6;
Xiao­mi: Mix, Mix2;
One Plus: 3t;
Google: Pixel/Pixel 2;
Sony: Xpe­ria XZ;
Nubia: Z11, Z11 mini, Z11 min­iS;
LG: V20, V30.

Here are the devices that the adapter is not com­pat­i­ble with:

XIAOMI: Xiao­mi 5, Xiao­mi 6, Xiao­mi 5s, Red­mi series, Xiao­mi Note2;
HUAWEI Honor8;
Nubia: Z11/Z11 mini/Z11 min­iS;
LG: V20/V30;
Meizu: Note 6/Note 5;
Smar­ti­san: Nut Pro.

I am the own­er of a Xiao­mi Mi Max 2 smart­phone, with which the adapter is also com­pat­i­ble (at least it works for me).

The cam­era can be con­trolled with­out an adapter, but a phys­i­cal con­nec­tion to the phone will pro­vide the fol­low­ing fea­tures:
• view­ing of the image in real time;
• broad­cast­ing;
• view­ing and edit­ing the footage (includ­ing the use of tech­nol­o­gy “Smart­Track”);
• assign­ment of the func­tion of triple press­ing the but­ton on the cam­era + enabling / dis­abling pho­tog­ra­phy in RAW;
• stitch­ing cal­i­bra­tion.

The cam­era in it is fixed secure­ly, but I have some com­plaints about con­nect­ing to the phone. The fact is that on the device (in this case with Xiao­mi Mi Max 2) the adapter is not fixed in any way, that is, the only point of con­tact is in the USB Type‑C port.
Due to the fact that the smart­phone is quite thin, there is a lot of space between the walls of the adapter and the smart­phone. Thus, it is nec­es­sary to be extreme­ly care­ful not to dam­age / bend any­thing.

It would be much bet­ter if the walls of the adapter could be fixed depend­ing on the thick­ness of the device to which it is con­nect­ed.

More­over, not only do the walls do not come into con­tact with the device, they also cov­er two touch but­tons.

Results

Sum­ming up, I can say that for such a cost, this adapter could have been more care­ful­ly thought out and more opti­mized for Android devices.

With all due respect to the man­u­fac­tur­er and love of Insta360 prod­ucts, I con­sid­er this adapter too expen­sive and imprac­ti­cal.

You can buy here:
• AliEx­press