VWFNDR + MBL is a unique new camera app for Android

An innovative take on authentic mobile photography

A couple of years ago, I wrote about a prototype camera that was being shown off by a small team of designers in Tokyo. The Keirin, by VFWNDR, fused hardware and software to demonstrate an elegant concept for an ideal panorama-forward camera.

Although the Keirin is yet to become a commercial device, there’s a lot of its DNA in what VWFNDR has decided to release as its first product: an innovative new camera app for Android phones. VWFNDR + MBL is available now for free.

There’s a few things going on in VWFNDR + MBL, which I was lightly involved in testing before its release, and they make it quite unlike other apps available.

The first is the UI. This is where the app is most reminiscent of the Keirin; it uses the same idea of dragging the viewfinder into different aspect ratios, with the settings and buttons shifting around to fit.

Here’s the 35mm-standard 3:2, for example, which is a little wider than the 4:3 default on pretty much every phone:

Or you can stretch the viewfinder even wider to 2:1 and see how the UI adapts:

You’re also able to drag all the controls around the grid and place them where you want. It’s an intuitive system for photographers, with a button that switches between standard modes like full manual, shutter priority, program and auto, each option highlighting rows where you can swipe to adjust the relevant parameters.

Swiping all the way to the right of the controls brings up this simple settings screen, while swiping to the left of the viewfinder shows you your recently captured images.

That brings me to the next key feature of VWFNDR + MBL, which is that it is designed to capture and export unprocessed 16-bit RAW images in .DNG format. This is commonplace in popular enthusiast iOS apps like Halide, and some Android phone makers offer the option in their stock camera apps, but it’s less common for a third-party Android solution.

The results are, well, they’re RAW files. You don’t benefit from the computational grunt that most phones deploy for things like multi-frame stitching or noise reduction, and lens distortion isn’t automatically corrected — you’re at the mercy of your hardware, and you’ll likely want to edit your shots later to dial in the desired results.

But this gives you a lot of creative latitude down the line, and it frees you from the over-sharpened, over-processed, overly HDR results that mainstream phones churn out by default. VWFNDR presents this as a return to authenticity, transforming your phone into a more traditional camera.

And that plays into the final standout feature, which is that VWFNDR is (to my knowledge) the first third-party app that works with CP2A Content Credentials, a fairly new initiative that embeds metadata into images to prove they were captured with a real camera. Google added support for the built-in camera app on Pixel 10 phones last year, while Leica has started to do the same on newer models like the M11-P as well as the Leitzphone designed alongside Xiaomi.

The Content Credentials signature doesn’t last forever, as it’ll vanish if you edit the photo or upload a JPEG to social media. But as long as you have the original .DNG from the VWFNDR app, you can upload it to a compatible platform and prove that it was captured by a real camera, rather than edited in Photoshop or generated by AI.

I know from talking to the VWFNDR team during the development process that putting this app together was a hugely complicated task, and there are some limitations that weren’t able to be ironed out.

There’s no way to switch lenses within the app, for example, owing to manufacturers’ different implementations of the Android camera stack. And while the app has been tested on countless phones, including several from my drawers, it’s impossible to guarantee compatibility with everything.

VWFNDR + MBL isn’t going to replace something like the Leica Authentic mode on a Xiaomi 17 Ultra for my personal, general use. There’s something to be said for .JPEG files that look great out of camera, after all.

But I really encourage anyone with an Android phone to check this app out. It’s breathed new life into my Pixel 10 Pro, for example, which is not otherwise something I’d normally use for creative, traditional photography; it really makes it feel like a bespoke compact camera, one that encourages me to take my time shooting and editing the unfiltered results.