Godox has announced the A2, a flash that’s designed to attach to the back of your phone. While almost every smartphone has a flash built-in, they’re almost always LEDs, which aren’t particularly powerful, and don’t really produce the look most people associate with flash photography. The A2, meanwhile, has a xenon flash tube, like you’d find on a traditional compact or flash gun.

It magnetically connects to the back of your phone, providing the classic front-on flash look that is nostalgically associated with photos from compact cameras. However, since it’s wireless, you’re also free to detach it from your phone and use it as a bounce or fill light. The company says its bluetooth connection should work at up to 15m (49′) away.

Godox

Unlike most cameras, phones don’t really expect you to be using them with an external flash, which means you can’t use the A2 with your phone’s built-in camera app. Instead, Godox is providing its own app, which lets you either shoot in auto mode, which decides how bright the flash should be and your exposure settings for you, or in a fully manual mode that gives you control over all those settings.

Godox

Godox says that, at launch, the app will work with the iPhone 15 or newer running at least iOS 18. The company promises that versions for Android and Huawei’s HarmonyOS are in the works.

The flash is small enough to fit in most pockets once detached from your phone, so it’s not surprising that it’s not the most powerful light out there, with a guide number of 15. The company says that, for best results, you should have the flash within 2m (6’6″) of your subject. But while it’s not particularly powerful in the world of standalone flashes, it’s still much brighter than the flash included on your phone.

The A2 also has a 3W bi-color modeling light built-in, which you can use to make focusing and composing easier in dark environments, or as a video light with adjustable color temperature. The company says you should be able to leave it running at full power for up to an hour off of the 500mAh internal battery, which is also good for up to 400 full-power flashes.

Alongside it, Godox is releasing several optional accessories that you can use to shape the light and change its look, and that give you more options for positioning it. The magnetic ring that lets you attach the flash to your phone also means you can theoretically mount it to any magnetic surface.

The A2 seems like a very interesting product for anyone who’s serious about phone photography, and we’ve enjoyed Godox’s flashes in the past. It will, however, be interesting to see how well its camera app works, and whether it comes with a hit to image quality. So much of mobile photography comes down to multi-shot exposures and computation, and it’s unclear whether Godox’s app will have any of that (and, if it does, how well it’ll play with flash).

Godox

Thankfully, Godox isn’t demanding too high a price for the A2: it retails for $85, and comes with a diffuser dome and carrying case. It’s also available in four colors which, perhaps unsurprisingly, match this year’s crop of pro iPhones: silver, black, light blue and dark red.

Getty Images has said it plans to go through the Chapter 11 bankruptcy process as a step to being taken private by members of the Getty family and Koch Inc’s investment arm, who will together invest up to $533M in the business.

“Under the Plan, vendors will be unaffected and paid in full in the ordinary course of business,” the company said: “There is no anticipated impact on content contributors, partners, customers, or employees across the Company’s worldwide network.”

The stock image library had given up on its attempts to buy rival ShutterStock after the UK competition body forced revisions to the deal. The heavily indebted company has now been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange and its two largest shareholders say they’ve developed a plan to take the company private.

Although the company said it expects a reduction in revenue from its iStock division, “due to reduced eCommerce
demand,” it said it still expects to see growth in its editorial business that provides images to news outlets.

This plan, if approved by the remaining creditors, will be implemented via a “prepackaged” Chapter 11 bankruptcy: a mechanism by which a company can be significantly reorganized, overseen by a bankruptcy court but under the control of the existing owners, in order to remain as a going concern. Some existing lenders have agreed to write-down and restructure some of the company’s debts as part of the process, and the company confirmed “the requisite majority of creditors have committed to vote in favor of the plan.”

It says the restructuring process should be complete by the end of the year.

News agency (and competitor) Reuters reports that competition from AI-generated imagery and heavy debt have played a role in the move. It highlighted that the company’s total debt was around $2.1B at the end of June, whereas its market valuation had slipped to just under $21M when markets closed last Friday. The company’s revenue estimate for 2026 is $920M.

In an accompanying financial update, Getty Images said it had spent around $105M on the failed ShutterStock acquisition, along with $17M in ongoing costs relating to its copyright infringement cases against Stability AI, which it accuses of using its images to train an image generation model.