Google Photos stores your pics and vids for free

ONE of my pet peeves are smartphones with “dumb” features that cripple their usability. And the most unforgivable example, in my opinion, is selling a device with so little on-board storage that it quickly becomes a chore to use.

Apple is one of the biggest offenders. Until recently, it shipped models of its iphone with a miserly 15GB of storage. Plenty of Android phone-makers committed the same offence, but at least owners were able to upgrade their handsets with an after-market micro-sd card, which isn’t an option for iphone users.

One of the most common complaints I hear from iphone users is “I’m always running out of space”. My wife, an otherwise staunch iphone fan, can never take new photos or videos without deleting old ones from her device.

That’s because images – still and moving – are among the biggest storage hogs. Cloud back-up solutions like Apple icloud, Microsoft Onedrive, Google Drive and independent provider Dropbox are solutions.

But as you’ll know if you’ve tried them, once you’ve used up the limited amount of free storage on offer, you have to start paying if you want to keep your precious visuals backed up. With these services priced in dollars, this can easily run into hundreds of rapidly depreciating rands.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a service that would store as many images and videos as you wanted for free? Enter Google Photos which has, for some time, offered unlimited free photo uploads. Yes, you read that correctly. Unlimited. Free. I’m surprised more people haven’t heard of it.

There are a few caveats, though. Each picture has to be 16 megapixels or smaller and videos can’t be bigger than 1080p. Larger items get compressed. The same applies to videos, which get compressed to 1 080p.

That’s plenty big enough for most ordinary mortals, but professional photographers and serious hobbyists will still need to pay for the peace of mind and convenience of cloud storage, although most of them won’t be capturing their masterpieces on a cellphone camera.

To take advantage of the service, you’ll need a smartphone or cameraequipped tablet running Google’s Android operating system or Apple’s IOS. You’ll also need to download and install the free Google Photos app from your device’s app store.

Once it’s installed, you’ll be prompted to start uploading your pictures to Google’s cloud. If you already have lots of images stored on your phone, it may initially take several hours (possibly days, if you have a slow internet connection) to upload them, but thereafter every new picture you snap should be whisked up to the cloud automatically and quickly.

The app’s default setting is to only upload pics when you’re connected to a Wifi network and I’d advise leaving it like that, unless you have a particularly generous mobile data bundle.

All of your pics will remain private until you choose to share them. Until a few years ago, you had to use Google Plus to do this which, frankly, was a bit of chore. Google wisely ditched this requirement and you can now easily post photos to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.

You can also e-mail someone a link to a pic or video and they’ll be able to view it even if they don’t have the Google Photos app, great news for your technophobic relatives or friends.

One of my favourite features of the app is the way Google organises your photos. Tap the search icon and you’ll be able to search your archive under three broad categories: Places, Things and People. Examples of “Places” in my app include City of London, Durban, Kloof and Westville, and as you’d expect, each is populated with pictures taken in those places.

I’m guessing it’s fairly simple for Google to sort these pictures using GPS and Wifi info captured, along with the visual data each time you snap a pic.

But it’s with the “Things” and “People” categories that it verges on creepy – it’s so clever. Search terms can include cars, food, flowers, dogs and the names of your friends, family and work colleagues. With a few hilarious exceptions, it’s amazingly accurate.

Somehow, Google’s artificial intelligence is able to recognise these objects and faces in your pics and sort them accordingly.

All this makes it a breeze to search through thousands of images to find that one of Oom Danie and his dachshund, Dexter, you snapped on your visit to Parys four, or was it five years ago? I just typed in the names of my kids and Google Photos dredged up pics of them taken when they were toddlers – they’re now in matric and first-year varsity.

There are a few drawbacks. You will need regular access to an internet connection to make the best use of it, and videos can take a long time to upload. I’d suggest keeping them as small as possible, breaking them up into several smaller video files rather than a single big one.

I’d also strongly suggest making a local back-up of your photos and videos on a portable hard drive, in case you fall out with Google and they freeze your account. This is highly unlikely, but not as far-fetched as it may sound.

Your account may be hacked or someone with a grudge against you may lodge a spurious complaint with Google, leaving your locked out of your account with no access to your storehouse of treasured memories.

• Follow Alan Cooper on Twitter @ alanqcooper