Cloud photo options (for Android phone)

strumpusplunket · 20 Jul 2014 at 21:17

Just got my Galaxy S5 a few days ago, and I thought I'd be getting another two years of 50GB free space on Dropbox, since that was advertised as coming with the phone.

However, I now find that if you've previously had free space with another phone you can't get it again. Pretty miffed about this as I didn't see it stated anywhere and Three even told me I'd get the space again.

Oh well. I've been migrating my files out of Dropbox, leaving only my work folder in there.

One thing Dropbox did really well, though, was not only let me backup all my photos to the cloud, but view them quickly and efficiently on my phone as well (loading them quickly, letting me swipe from one to the next within the native app, etc.).

Is there a good alternative that does the same thing?

Tried OneDrive: nice in many ways, but too slow (much too slow).

Tried Mega: also slower than Dropbox, and doesn't have photo viewing inside the app on the phone. You have to download and view photos with another app. So that's no good.

Tried Google Photos: good in some ways, but it insists on grabbing every single photo from every single file on my phone! So, every piece of album art, every podcast video is displayed alongside my own photos. And I can't make it stop!

Are there any other options?

Skully · 20 Jul 2014 at 21:33

It's £5 a month why not keep Dropbox?

Em3bbs · 20 Jul 2014 at 22:04

You can tell Google Drive to backup from specific folders only.

strumpusplunket · 20 Jul 2014 at 22:39

Skully said:
It's £5 a month why not keep Dropbox?

Well, first because I was ****** off with Dropbox for what I thought was dishonest marketing over their free 50GB offer. I had a "scre you, Dropbox" moment (though I can't quite live without it for backing up all my work across my different PCs).

But with a more measured reflection, this might be an option, but I'd rather find an alternative if there is one.

Em3bbs said:
You can tell Google Drive to backup from specific folders only.

Yes, Drive actually could work. For some reason I thought all photos you put in drive now funneled you into the Google Photos route, but it seems you can use the Drive app to browse photos, and it does seem pretty good at it. Will have to have a play with it and see.

Scope · 20 Jul 2014 at 22:46

I have always found Dropbox extremely slow..

Personally I use the built in functionality to upload the photos automatically to my Google+ account.. You've got 15gb available.

DIABLO · 20 Jul 2014 at 22:50

Scope said:
I have always found Dropbox extremely slow..

Personally I use the built in functionality to upload the photos automatically to my Google+ account.. You've got 15gb available.

Photos under a certain resolution don't count towards the allowance.

strumpusplunket · 20 Jul 2014 at 23:05

DIABLO said:
Photos under a certain resolution don't count towards the allowance.

Is this the case if you use Drive, or only Google Photos? And does it make a difference how they're stored? It seems Google Photos uploads the photos not as the original file but as a Google picture, whereas Drive syncs files to and from your PC like Dropbox does. Finding the inter-relation of these different strands of Google a bit confusing.

Mittens · 21 Jul 2014 at 18:39

have you tried Trunx ?

should be a better dropbox alternative especially for the privacy conscious

strumpusplunket · 21 Jul 2014 at 23:25

No, not heard of it before, but it does look interesting. I'll check it out. Ta.

strumpusplunket · 22 Jul 2014 at 14:25

Ok, just did a little trial run with Trunx. Whilst it is a very nice app in lots of ways, like Google Photos it doesn't maintain the folder structure of any uploaded pictures. This is no good to me since I have nearly 7000 photos, and the date information is unreliable on any taken prior to about 2010.

Still feeling very hacked off with Dropbox and still resolved not to give them any money due to this free space con.

Here's hoping Mega improve their mobile app to include native photo viewing like others do. Or perhaps I could just learn to live with the sluggish speed of OneDrive since that's the nicest alternative I've found so far. I'll be uploading photos for a week though. Or there's always Google Drive (as opposed to photos) with space for £1 a month. Decisions, decisions...

meandu229 · 22 Jul 2014 at 14:31

strumpusplunket said:
Ok, just did a little trial run with Trunx. Whilst it is a very nice app in lots of ways, like Google Photos it doesn't maintain the folder structure of any uploaded pictures. This is no good to me since I have nearly 7000 photos, and the date information is unreliable on any taken prior to about 2010.

Still feeling very hacked off with Dropbox and still resolved not to give them any money due to this free space con.

Here's hoping Mega improve their mobile app to include native photo viewing like others do. Or perhaps I could just learn to live with the sluggish speed of OneDrive since that's the nicest alternative I've found so far. I'll be uploading photos for a week though. Or there's always Google Drive (as opposed to photos) with space for £1 a month. Decisions, decisions...

I use onedrive dont find it too slow, Once my current sub is up Im gonna buy office 365 home subscription as for ~£55 for a year you get 5x1tb accounts on onedrive and 5x office accounts (+ some skype n stuff) so if you found a few people to share it with its like £1 per month if not then its £4.50 a month for office and 1tb space which isnt too bad at all.

tom_e · 22 Jul 2014 at 14:33

I'm not sure why you're miffed with Dropbox, you can't expect them to just keep giving you free space and it's Three that lied and told you you'd get it again.

Rich_L · 22 Jul 2014 at 15:09

Dunno but as I have Office 365 sub my OneDrive is now 1Tb of space so will probably start using that

KIA · 22 Jul 2014 at 15:32

Cough up for Dropbox.

strumpusplunket · 22 Jul 2014 at 16:22

tom_e said:
I'm not sure why you're miffed with Dropbox, you can't expect them to just keep giving you free space and it's Three that lied and told you you'd get it again.

Not entirely. It's a well-advertised promotion for the S5 with disqualifying conditions hidden away (I and many others were completely surprised our S5 purchases didn't qualify for the space). Also, when it's bundled as a promotion with another device it can't be considered as them just giving away free space out of some sort of benevolence. It's a commercial tie-in with another company advertised widely to boost sales of that product. I'd be lying if I said the advertised space didn't play at least some part in swaying my decision to go for the S5 over the LG G3.

I am far from the only one put out by this. In fact, one website I found was by someone who, it seems, is going so far as to try to assemble a class-action suit against Dropbox for misrepresenting the conditions of their offer. Now I maybe a stubborn old fool, but even I wouldn't go that far...

KIA said:
Cough up for Dropbox.

No!

(Seriously, if it came to paying for space, I'd go with Drive because it's so much cheaper for so much more space, and although I prefer Dropbox as an app/platform, I don't prefer it that much...)

Edit: one thing that has surprised me out of this little quest is how many photo "organising" apps don't organise imported photos according to your existing folder structure.

Mint_Sauce · 22 Jul 2014 at 16:47

Google+ and just select certain folders.

DIABLO · 22 Jul 2014 at 17:25

strumpusplunket said:
Is this the case if you use Drive, or only Google Photos? And does it make a difference how they're stored? It seems Google Photos uploads the photos not as the original file but as a Google picture, whereas Drive syncs files to and from your PC like Dropbox does. Finding the inter-relation of these different strands of Google a bit confusing.

You have to Google photos I believe, you can turn off the option of Google compressing the original file.

strumpusplunket · 22 Jul 2014 at 18:39

meandu229 said:
I use onedrive dont find it too slow, Once my current sub is up Im gonna buy office 365 home subscription as for ~£55 for a year you get 5x1tb accounts on onedrive and 5x office accounts (+ some skype n stuff) so if you found a few people to share it with its like £1 per month if not then its £4.50 a month for office and 1tb space which isnt too bad at all.

I tried it again just now, and the upload was chugging along at the upstream capacity of my connection. When I tried before it was less than half that, but maybe that was just an aberration.

DIABLO said:
You have to Google photos I believe, you can turn off the option of Google compressing the original file.

Yeah, I quite like that aspect of Google Photos, but it's the inability to easily mirror the folder structure for browsing that kills it for me. With 7000 photos, for around 2000 of which the date information is wrong, being able to view only by date (or the laborious task of manually creating albums), I need something that will keep photos where I can find them.

Going to give OneDrive another go now the u/l speed seems better, but with 30GB of free space I'm not currently using that could just be the solution. Dunno what was wrong with it before.