This is a pretty basic, but I'd love some advice.
I just like to take souvenir "we were here" shots when we travel, nothing fancy. My Canon CoolPix P&S camera is old and takes worse pictures than my little Samsung Android J3 phone. I'd like to be able to see what I'm shooting outdoors. The phone will do that, so I hope to take just the phone on our next trip and save some packing space.
Looking for some expert advice: My little phone has only 8GB internal memory, so it won't hold lots of photos. (Rather, they're saved to expansion memory card which has lots of room, but the Gallery won't open if there is too much on it. It seems to jam up the phone and I get "card corrupt" errors - even when the card is OK.) My thought was to send the day's photos to the "cloud" to store each day (via wifi?) and delete them from the phone (for more room), and then download them to my Windows PC when we get home. I have no "cloud" presently, and am not really familiar with the process. How do folks make this work, especially when overseas? Do I risk losing all my photos? Overall is this a bad idea? Or is this what some of you do and how? Any ideas welcome!
Posted by
Portland, Oregon
5687 posts
If you have an Android phone, you can sign up for Google Photos (app), which will automatically upload (sync) your photos to your Google Photos account. (You probably could with an iPhone too - but I assume most iPhone users would use the iCloud.) Google gives you free unlimited photo storage if you allow them to compress your photos a little - and it sounds like you wouldn't mind that. Newer phones have Google Photos setup automatically - you in fact need to turn it OFF on the newer phones. I was a little put off at first when I realized that was happening automatically but decided I don't care about my phone photos being in the cloud - but it is a little more convenient.
You can also buy extra memory cards for your phone - and swap them out when one fills up. What's the largest your phone can handle? Some may be limited to only 32GB memory cards. Mine accepts up to 128GB - and that would store a lot of photos (not as many videos).
Posted by
Orange Park, Fl
985 posts
I second the google photos free storage.
Posted by
Milwaukie, Oregon
1056 posts
Or you could buy a thumb drive and upload them to the thumb drive.
Posted by
Arcadia, CA
581 posts
By reading this Forum, I found that SanDisk has a flash drive for my iPhone. I just checked Amazon and there are some for Android phones too. Like you, my camera is not doing well, so I'm just taking my iPhone for photos on my trip in September. I've already tested it out and it works great. So you can transfer your photos and then delete them from your phone. (Just don't lose the flash drive;)! Have a great trip!
Posted by
OP
14 posts
Thanks for all the great answers. Appreciate the help
By reading this Forum, I found that SanDisk has a flash drive for my iPhone. I just checked Amazon and there are some for Android phones too. Like you, my camera is not doing well, so I'm just taking my iPhone for photos on my trip in September. I've already tested it out and it works great. So you can transfer your photos and then delete them from your phone. (Just don't lose the flash drive;)!
That seemed like a great option. Samsung says that my phone won't support the SanDisk plug in flash drive, but I did find a SanDisk "wireless" flash drive that should work. I'm going to give that a try - and learn to use Google Photos, too.
Thanks everyone.
Posted by
Portland, Oregon
5687 posts
I've found Google Photos works great for me even though I use my phone only for snapshots. Whenever I take pics, as soon as I get on WiFI Google uploads all of my photos promptly. I find it very reliable. Although I don't use my phone for "important" pictures, if I did, I would have no worries about using Google Photos I grab phone photos using Google Photos all the time with my laptop.
One important caveat though for Google Photos: it's IMPORTANT HOW you delete photos from your phone so you don't erase them from Google photos, too!!!
Google Photos has an option called "Free up device storage" that you need to use to delete the photos from your phone without also deleting them from Google! Use that instead of deleting photos one by one on the phone - otherwise Google may "sync" them and think you are trying to erase them from Google too!
Just try it a few times ahead of time: take a few pictures on your phone, then find them in Google Photos. Then use the "Free up device storage" option to get rid of the photos fro your phone (so you have enough space for more!) and check back with Google Photos the next day and confirm the photos you shot are still on Google.
You won't need to use this option, though, until you actually fill up your phone's memory card.
Posted by
Phoenix, AZ USA
156 posts
Google Photos has an app for iPhone as well. I love it. Another alternative is an Office 365 subscription, which includes 1TB of storage and features automatic upload if you so choose.
I try to keep as few photos as possible on my iPhone 7 Plus to keep storage available, and this works well. Anything to avoid Apple's ridiculous cloud storage fees...
Posted by
37 posts
Google Photos/Drive is a great option, if you're willing to do the daily upload for the photos. Adding a bigger capacity SD card would be a great option too.