Firstly, the app is FAST!
In addition to its excellent user interface and smart search functionality, one of the major features of Google Photos for iPhone (and probably the biggest) is the free unlimited cloud storage for photos and videos. With cloud syncing, Google Photos is perhaps the biggest threat to Apple’s own iCloud photos app on iOS and Mac.
While most iOS users probably won’t switch to Google’s storage solution, we thought we’d list few features that might appeal to some.
“Unlimited” Google Drive Storage vs iCloud’s free 5GB & OneDrive’s 15 GB
Google decided to offer FREE unlimited storage for all your photos and videos by saving them to your Google Drive account. When you set up the Photos app, you’ll be faced with two options:
- High Quality offers unlimited storage with slight compression
- Original which will give you 15GB (or whatever current storage you have) without compression
In the high quality option, the app backs up photos up to 16MP and 1080p videos. Photos larger than 16MP in size will be resized and slightly compressed in a way that the eye doesn’t notice the difference. While this will be fine for smartphone photographers, it won’t be an attractive offer to professional DSLR photographers. With original size option, you can upload bigger photos and videos without compression but it eats up from your Google Drive storage plan allowance.
Cross-Platform
Google Photos app is available on Android (obviously) and iOS, and has a web interface as well which gives you access to your photos on any browser.
Management
The Photos app groups images by people and places, giving you hassle-free features to search and sort all your uploads. You can view photos and videos by weeks and months. You can pinch-to-zoom and quickly scroll up or down through your photos in any zoom position.
One of the biggest features of Google Photos is its search capabilities. Type in a word, phrase, location and Google Photos will bring up photos that match the search term. It can even recognise faces in photos (which Apple’s iCloud does) but arguably, Google does it better.
Other features
“Assistant” is a feature which helps you edit and add some creativity to your photos and videos like taking a bunch of selfies that you took and turn them into an animated GIF. Assistant can automatically create collages and animated photo from batches and save them to your library, but you can also manually curate stories and albums from your photos and share them with your friends.
Another feature is Instant Delete. Once your phone memory begins to run out of space, the app will suggest deleting photos stored locally that have already been backed up on Google Drive. The new photos app lets you share photos and videos privately as well. Select a picture, click the Get link button in the sharing menu, and the link will automatically copy to your clipboard.
So, is this something you are willing to try? or are you sticking with iOS’ native cloud solution? let us know your comments and experiences.
[button color=”blue” target=”_blank | _self ” url= https://itunes.apple.com/app/id962194608] Download Google Photos for iOS [/button]
