Lapse is a social disposable camera for iPhone, inspired by the experience of using a point-and-shoot film camera. Take together on the same roll. 36 shots. No review. No edit.
The brief
During a backpacking trip to Vietnam in 2019, Ben (co-founder of Lapse), used a disposable film camera as a way of disconnecting, unwinding and living in the present. He came away from the trip incredibly inspired, and approached us to build an app aiming to re-create a similar experience for iPhone.
Our approach
In February 2021, our team started building the initial back-end infrastructure and the iPhone app. Within just three months, the app was ready for a beta release to thousands of users on TestFlight—this was met with hugely positive feedback. We collaborated with AWS serverless experts, aleios, to prepare the app for scale to hundreds of thousands of users for the public release in September 2021.
The launch
After going viral and racking up tens of millions of views on TikTok, the app acquired over 150k pre-orders. On launch day, Lapse hit #1 on the UK and US App Stores. Soon after, Apple reached out offering a feature on the App Store. In February 2022, Apple awarded Lapse with "App of the Day".
