Taking lots of photos on the cell phone, the first concern is to keep them, to know that they are safe and that they will not be lost even if the phone breaks or is stolen. In addition, photos take up space on the phone's memory and even for the one with the largest storage space, you will soon be required to free up space. To keep the photos safe, until a few years ago, the only way was to download them on the computer, then connecting the smartphone to the PC via cable to transfer the photos via USB cable. This method is, however, a rather boring job that you had to remember, often impossible to do if you were traveling away from home. Furthermore, even by saving the photos on the PC, it is possible to lose them anyway if the hard disk breaks and a backup is still required on an external hard disk or on another memory unit.
A better, automatic, fast and safe solution is instead that of the cloud, to save the photos taken with the mobile phone a second after the shot, so as not to lose them even if the phone suddenly broke into a thousand pieces.
To make an automatic backup of the photos taken with the Android smartphone or with an iPhone, therefore, you can use these applications that offer a perfect free service.
1) Google Photos
As repeatedly repeated in this blog, the best app for backing up photos is Google Photos, which I have personally used for years with satisfaction. The main advantage of Google Photos is that it is free without any limitation, for backing up both photos and videos. This means that it is possible to keep millions of images online without worrying about losing them, with the guarantee that Google will keep them on its servers forever, visible online from any PC or other smartphone. The Google Photos app on Android and iPhone takes care of automatic backup and also has the function of freeing up space by deleting the photos that are already safe in its online archive.
To backup photos with Google Photos, you only need to install the app (Android or iPhone), log in with your Google account and activate the backup in the settings using the unlimited option. From that moment the backup is automatic and the photos are visible both from the application (by logging on with the same Google account) and from the website photos.google.com. A big advantage of Google Photos is the possibility of being able to find images using the intelligent search box provided, which also incorporates descriptive searches (for example, "beach photos")
The only condition to use Google Photos for Free is to use the "high quality" photo storage option. Compression uses a really good algorithm and it's almost impossible to distinguish between the original and Google's compressed backup. Furthermore, it only occurs for photos with a size larger than 16 Megapixels, which is a resolution large enough for any camera. You can also choose to backup your images in original quality, although in this case there is the storage limit of the free Google Drive account (15 GB).
2) Photos of Amazon Prime
The second choice in this sector is definitely the Prime Foto Amazon app, which is free if you already have an Amazon Prime subscription.
Prime Photos therefore offers unlimited storage space for photos, which has no conditions and limitations, in original format.
The only flaw is that the backup does not apply to videos, which are saved instead in Amazon Cloud Drive which instead requires a subscription (for free there are only 5 GB). To have the backup of the videos you can pay a 100 GB subscription for 20 Euros per month or 1 TB for 100 Euros.
To use Prime Foto you only need to download the app for Android or for iPhone and then connect to the Amazon Prime account and activate automatic backup.
3) Flickr
The photography site that was Yahoo today no longer offers the same level of service, and there is no longer the 1 TB (1000 GB) free space for photos and videos that was available until recently.
Using the application for Android or that for iPhone it is possible to activate the automatic backup of the photos in the memory of the phone, which will take place in a private folder and visible only to us.
4) iCloud (iPhone only)
Those who only use an iPhone could choose to activate iCloud automatic backup from the iOS settings, without installing other applications. The free account allows you to use a limited 5 GB space, which is very small for daily and permanent use.
You will have to buy an annual subscription by choosing one of these plans: 50 GB for 1 euro, 200 GB for 3 euro or 2 TB for 10 euro.
Since 50 GB should be enough for everyone, paying iclopud could be convenient. However, the fact that iCloud is only available on iPhone makes this solution a bit limiting, especially if you want to change the type of phone in the future.
Photos stored in iCloud can be found online on the iCloud website.
5) Dropbox
Dropbox has been the world's most used cloud app for years so its photo backup feature is still used by many people.
In this sense, the Dropbox app is not as complete as Google Photos, and is limited by the amount of space you have with Dropbox (for new accounts it is not convenient because they are only 2 GB).
If you have a lot of space available in Dropbox, then you can use the app for Android and iPhone the option of the camera carimenti, available in the Settings menu.
6) Other automatic photo backup services
Other backup solutions are offered by several other applications such as:
- pCloud
- Onedrive
- G Cloud (for Android and iPhone)
- MyCloud (Android and iPhone)
READ ALSO: Best "cloud" web apps for storing photos
