When unlimited Google Photos became paid two years ago, many of us looked for alternatives to save our photos and videos in the cloud. AND I found the best solution where I least expected it and without spending more, although this point has small print, since I am talking about my Amazon Prime subscription, an essential requirement for its use. I am Prime because of the fast and free shipping, but the reality is that I am getting more and more out of extra services that are included such as Prime Video or in this case, Amazon Photos.
So once the decision was made, I installed the app (free for Android in Play Store and for iPhone in the App Store) on my personal iPhone and a couple of Android phones that I use for tinkering, I logged in (which means accepting the terms of use) and after giving Amazon access to all my photos, I turned on auto-save on my devices. To avoid wasting my data, I left it set to only have these backups occur when I have Wi-Fi. The perspective that the passing of these two years gives me confirms that I made the right decision: Amazon Photos has not only turned out to be a worthy alternative, but today I like it better.
Amazon Photos vs Google Photos, according to my experience
One of the things that What I like most about Amazon Photos is that it saves photographs in original quality and unless we wish, it does not compress them, so they are saved just as we would do it manually on a computer, preserving formats such as PNG, HEIC or JPG. This is a great advantage over Google Photos (in its favor, the compression it does is quite refined, but in RAW it is quite noticeable), especially if you make the most of the qualities of your phone, you are a demanding person or you simply work with the images that shots, with its subsequent subsequent editing. On a personal note, what I use the most are photos, so for me this is a winner.
Another point that has been most useful to me is Amazon Photos’ facial recognition, which is practical for organizing photos and works quite well. I have to admit that in the must, The search engine is less powerful than Google Photos when identifying some things. Thus, when searching for ‘orange’, while Google Photos was able to return photos of sunsets, Amazon Photos stays with the fruit.
Likewise, the possibility of sharing albums has been a luxury for me and if you also do it with people who like to work with originals, then they will appreciate it even more. Yes indeed, When it comes to sharing, you can see that Google Photos is still the favorite option of many people (or at least the most mainstream), which means that by using another platform you are left without the possibility of setting up a collaborative album where several people can upload content.
I am ‘orphaned’ in video storage
But Amazon Photos is not perfect and its main problem is in the videos. Because when it comes to saving videos, your storage is no longer unlimited, being restricted to only 5GB, something that in practice lasts a breeze, especially if you like, like me, to take advantage of the benefits of my cell phones’ cameras. While it is true that Google Photos had considerable limitations that have to do with quality, since it automatically uploaded the videos at a maximum of 1080p (goodbye to 4K), at least you had them safe and at hand ad infinitum.
At the moment I’m managing to save my best videos locally the old-fashioned way, but that involves manual effort and a sieve. I have already paid for Apple storage for several years, but my reality has been that in a relatively short time I reached the limit and had to pay more. That’s what it takes to record enough video and at good quality. Here yes I miss Google Photosat least from the point of always having the memories with me, since I am more interested in the videos than the quality (in general terms, because I don’t work with video).
There are those who have chosen buy an old Google Pixel to upload all your videos and photos to Google Photos taking advantage of Google’s promise And the truth is, if you take into account subscription services and the price of hard drives, it pays off in the medium term. It seems silly, but it is an intangible characteristic that At this point it is a real plus when choosing a mobile phone from the Android ecosystem.. Not to mention the quality of the device, even if it is a few years old behind it.
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