If the space on the phone is always running out or we are looking for a cloud space where to save important documents to be synchronized on multiple devices, we can also take advantage of Amazon Drive and Amazon Prime Photos . All data is stored online securely, with no possibility that others can get hold of it or download it.
We can therefore consider it a real "online hard disk" where it is sufficient to connect to the internet and enter the Amazon account password to start uploading any type of document.
Each file will be visible and downloadable from any other computer, tablet or mobile phone, using a web browser or the proprietary app.
Let's find out how to use Amazon Drive and Prime Photos .
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1) Install Amazon Drive
Amazon Drive is the cloud service offered by Amazon to save any type of personal file (documents, music, videos, images etc) or any folder on your PC to a dedicated space to access them from another location or from our mobile device.
If we want to use it on the PC, just visit the download page and download the version of Amazon Drive for Windows or Mac from here -> Amazon Drive PC .
If, on the other hand, we intend to use the service on Android and iOS, we can download the dedicated apps available here -> Amazon Drive (Android) and Amazon Drive (iOS).
As a simple and immediate alternative (even on devices where there is no app available) we can always use the Amazon Drive web page, which will allow you to access all the saved files and to upload / download the necessary via a browser.
The web page is accessible from here -> Amazon Drive Web .
2) Install Amazon Prime Photos
The Amazon Prime Photos service is parallel to that offered for the cloud and allows, once you install the apps on mobile devices, to automatically backup the new photos taken on a dedicated space, so that you can review them on other mobile devices or from your PC at any time.
Thanks to Amazon Prime Photos, our photos will always be safe on the cloud and we will be able to free up space on the phone, deleting the photos already synchronized with the apps.
To take advantage of Amazon Prime Photos we will need to download the free apps for Android and iPhone / iPad available from here -> Amazon Prime Photos (Android) and Amazon Prime Photos (iOS).
These apps are the starting point to make the most of the service on mobile phones and tablets, but we can also access synchronized photos on Windows and Mac by installing the synchronization client downloadable from here -> Amazon Prime Photos PC .
If, on the other hand, we want to access the photos saved by any web browser, simply open the web page dedicated to Amazon Prime Photos Web.
3) Space offered by the Amazon cloud
Let's start with the most interesting advantage for those who decide to focus on this cloud service to save photos from their smartphone automatically: for all users registered to Amazon Prime the storage space for photos is unlimited, thus being able to save photos without limits even at the highest quality.
This is a great advantage that we get practically without having to pay additional money, since at the cost of the subscription of Amazon Prime (currently € 36 per year or € 4.99 per month) it includes many other advantages related to shipping (delivery in a day or an hour in the defined areas), streaming benefits and exclusive discounts.
If we are Prime users, it is absolutely convenient to use the Amazon Prime Photos service to save the photos in automatic backup so that you can live without worries.
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If, on the other hand, we are interested in pure cloud space for all other types of files or we want to automatically backup photos without a Prime subscription, the space limit for the basic cloud is 5 GB .
If you want to have more cloud storage space, you can pay a subscription plan from 100 GB to 20 Euros per year or even 1 TB from 100 Euros per year and so on, up to a 30 TB plan from 3000 Euro per year designed primarily for companies.
To access the cloud space management page and to evaluate subscription plans we can use the dedicated page available here -> Manage Amazon Drive storage space .
The most interesting offers for the home user are obviously the first 2 ( 100 GB and 1 TB ), where at a relatively low cost we can get a lot of space to save the most important documents to always carry with us by installing specific apps on all our devices.
Since this space does not concern photographs (always if we have a Prime plan), it is absolutely not convenient for the average user to adopt plans of hundreds of euros for a cloud space that will hardly fill; if space on the PC is a problem, better bet on external disks.
READ ALSO -> Best portable external hard drives of 2 TB or more
Amazon has also started another service called Amazon Music which allows you to listen to the music uploaded or bought on the online store so that you can have it available on every used PC.
4) Conclusions
If we want to compare Amazon Cloud with rival services we find that for files in the cloud it has the same limits as Microsoft's OneDrive (which allows you to upload up to 5 GB of files for free), it has less capacity than the cloud offered by Google, that is Google Drive (15 GB) but definitely more space than the most used service for the cloud, at least at the beginning of technology, namely Dropbox (still at 2GB standard, but which can be increased by performing some tasks).
As a storage system for photos saved in automatic backup from your smartphone or tablet, Amazon Prime Photos rivals Google Photos, which also offers free unlimited space for photos but, to be able to use them, you need to perform an automatic photo compression during the loading.
Net of Amazon Prime costs Amazon Prime Photos is slightly higher than Google Photos because it does not compress photos, so we can save our shots at the highest quality.
