Google Photos released an ad on YouTube that articulates the need for online storage to keep all the Photos people tend to take. The ad shows people being let down by their phones while taking photos at important, and hard-to-recreate moments, such as during a jump, a mountain climbing expedition, and a fish jumping out of the water. The “Storage Full” message pops up with a silvery user interface that resembles the iOS notification panel. Perhaps, it represents Google taking a dig at the 16GB iPhone.
The advertisement has been well shot, and addresses real issues faced by smartphone users. A problem that mostly occurs in smartphones having high-res photography, is the lack of cloud storage. Moreover, with countless apps that users must install, 16GB is hardly anything to get by, especially when there is no option for expandable memory.
The ad could also entice users who tend to store all their photos on their phone instead of backing them up on an external hard drive or a cloud storage service. The norm is to store photos and media on expandable memory, such as a microSD card. The Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge do not offer expandable memory either, but the feature has been fixed in the new S7 lineup. So those with the older Galaxy flagship phones might also be tempted by the new ad. The commercial also targets owners of low-end Android smartphones, who might just have too many photos to keep on their low-end smartphones.
Google’s cloud service offers a “Free Up Space” feature, which not only backs photos up on Google Drive, but also delete their local copies on the phone. The search engine giant now allows its users to make new memories while their old ones are safely tucked away, to be retrieved whenever needed. This saves users the hassle of manually selecting duplicate photos which are stored on both, the phone as well as on Google Drive. It is ideal for people who click a ton of selfies and other photos, and just cannot choose between which ones to keep.
Interestingly, iPhone users might be tempted by Apple’s iCloud storage instead, as the aforementioned ad might end up promoting cloud storage services in general. However, Apple’s service does not automatically delete duplicate copies of backed-up photos from the device. This can particularly be an issue for users who might be on a trip and do not have the time to manually clear up storage. Moreover, iCloud is more limited in terms of the space it offers. Not to forget, it might deter some users given the celebrity photo hack that shook the Internet not that long ago.
Smartphone users may opt for the 133MB Google Photos app just for the backup feature. The app is compatible with iOS 8.1 and above. With unlimited storage even for high quality photos, iPhone users might as well consider the switch to Google Drive. After all, storing photos captured via 16MP lens and videos as detailed as 1080p, this appears to be a convenient solution.