At its annual developers conference, Google I/O on Thursday unveiled a new standalone service that stores photos and videos for free. Google Photos is now available for Android, iOS and the Web.
Once Google Photos is installed on any Android or iOS device, photos and videos automatically get uploaded and stored to the cloud.
Photos and videos are stored in the cloud at full resolution, with limits on maximum quality – 16-megapixel for photos and 1080p for videos.
If one wants to store higher resolution images or videos, Google account storage can be used that offers 15GB of free space shared between Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+ photos. Users can buy 1TB storage at $9.99 (Rs 650) per month, or 100GB at $1.99 (Rs 130) per month.
Google demo-ed the service on stage at I/O, and even though all images are stored on the cloud, browsing and scrolling through images looked pretty seamless.
Google Photos also automatically detects people and places, without you needing to enter tags or any other types of categorisation.
Google Photos comes with a built-in photo editor and collage maker. You can of course share images with others – even if they don’t use Google Photos. Simply dragging your finger around selects multiple images, eliminating the need to tap every image individually.