One thing that’s missing from a lot of Android apps is that “sexy” design many iOS apps are known for.  It’s the difference between being a pop consumer and a geeky renegade, I suppose.  The Android device is a combination of hardware and software that’s ready and willing to be configured, and this has been a blessing and a curse for Android developers.  From open source to fragmentation, the hills and valleys of Android’s developer environment can lead to something great, or disastrous.  In the case of Lightbox, it could lead to some kind of wonderful.

The photo-sharing app, fresh off angel funding and a wildly successful beta testing period that began at this year’s SXSW conference, Lightbox is ready to share its light with the world.  With a team experienced in high level engineering and product management at Yahoo and Google, Lightbox began with an important mission–to design a highly usable mobile app for Android devices, more specifically Android tablets.

Lightbox CEO and founder Thai Tran, who previously worked on product engineering for YouTube, recognized the early implications of Google’s mobile platform.  Android had improved significantly in its first year, and Tran projected that the OS would soon take over Apple’s mobile market share.  What was lacking on Android at the time was an extensive app market.  “We are focused on Android to create a good experience.  It’s the opposite of what everyone else was doing,” Tran says.

Chatting with Tran was like taking a short trip down memory lane.  Living in Atlanta at the time of Android’s launch was an experience similar to my living in San Francisco during the emergence of the iPhone.  Google’s close relationship with T-Mobile during Android’s initial roll out made Atlanta a hotbed of mobile experimentation.  Everywhere I went I found people toying around with the first and second renditions of Google’s Android handsets, presenting me with a closer look at the cultural experience of Android right from the start.  Exploring the device itself was great fun.  Taking on the market left plenty to be desired.

There were a few companies that hung their hopes on Android.  To compete with the iPhone, Android relied heavily on third party apps such as Amazon’s small collection for things like music downloads.  But as is the case with most Android apps even today, the design and end user experience is still akin to a PC when compared with Apple.  Lightbox is doing something unique, not only in its decision to focus on Android prior to iOS, but in its marriage of form and function within the app itself.  Lightbox is aesthetically pleasing, yes.  But it’s also complete with functions Android users are familiar with, in terms of cross-app sharing, menu tabs and the like.  Lightbox made a point to create an app that works synchronously with Android devices, simplifying the end user experience a great deal.

Beyond this, Lightbox is also designed to work as well as possible without an internet connection.  You may have noticed how many mobile apps are rendered useless once you veer from a hot spot, or have a low signal.  Lightbox leverages local device storage as well as the cloud to “think” in the background, uploading and syncing photos when you’re connected, but ready for action when you’re not.  Adding functionality at this level required lots of trial and error, Tran tells me.  “It’s a double-edged sword on Android, because you have to be extremely careful in how you use memory on the device.”

The Lightbox team faced other challenges during its extensive beta period, mostly involving Android fragmentation.  It’s an ongoing issue for countless Android developers, given the different implementations from Froyo to Gingerbread.  For a photo-sharing app, simply dealing with front- and rear-facing cameras on such a wide array of devices only compounds the issue of developing for varied versions of the Android OS.

In the grand scheme of things Lightbox is one of many photo-sharing apps in the Android Market, but it wants to be the best third party photo app on the platform.  Similar to what Amazon’s mp3 store did for early Android users, integrally enhancing the overall Android experience instead of merely adding to your growing list of downloaded apps.  In this way, Lightbox hopes to replace some of Android’s inborn functions, offering a better solution through software distribution.

Indeed, Lightbox’s use of the cloud is already comparable to Apple’s recently announced iCloud features for photo storage and access, a key differentiator being no limits on photo uploads and retrieval, whereas iCloud only stores content for 30 days.  Cloud sync across the web, phones and tablets is central to what Lightbox is trying to do, and that attitude will help carry this startup into the mobile future.