Here's the best way to save your photos off your phone
When it comes to iPhone storage, photos and videos are some of the biggest space hogs. With recent iPhones employing higher resolution front and rear cameras and shooting high-quality HD and 4K video, all those selfies can quickly make free space a premium.
While you can always transfer your pictures to your computer, there are other solutions to save your photos without ever having to plug in.
One of the best of these options is Google Photos. Google's free app allows anyone to upload their photos and videos to the cloud. Even better, it comes with free unlimited storage for videos (up to 1080p) and photos (up to 16-megapixels).
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Seeing as no current iPhone has more than 12-megapixel camera this shouldn't be a problem, though if you have 4K videos you can either have them uploaded for free (at that lower, 1080p HD resolution) or buy Google Drive space to save them in full quality. 100 GB of Google Drive storage costs $1.99 per month or $19.99 per year if you pay upfront (more storage is available for those who need it).
Google, however, isn't alone.
Apple has a similar feature called the iCloud Photo Library baked into the Photos app, but it does not include free unlimited storage. The company instead offers 5 GB for free, with 50 GB of space available for $0.99 per month and 200 GB of space for $2.99 per month (higher capacity plans are also available).
If you are an Amazon Prime customer you can get unlimited photo storage with the company's Prime Photos app as one of the many perks to the $99 per year subscription. While this is great for photos, which the app will automatically backup for you, you only get 10 GB of space for videos.
Users of Microsoft's $69.99 per year Office 365 Personal bundle — which includes access to the latest versions Word, Excel and PowerPoint — get 1 TB of storage through the company's OneDrive platform which is great for storing full-resolution photos and 4K video. Photos can be uploaded through the OneDrive app and, as with Apple and Amazon's offerings, the app can also be set to automatically upload photos for you. Microsoft also offers 50 GB of OneDrive storage for $1.99 per month for those who don't want Office 365 (the free version of OneDrive comes with 5 GB storage).
Startup Couch Labs' app Shoebox offers unlimited photo storage, but photos are capped at a 10.6-megapixel resolution and you only get 15 minutes of video backup. A $5 per month pro option offers the ability to save photos in their original quality and 10 GB of storage space for videos.
All the apps offer the ability to manage, organize and search through photos. Where Google is alone, however, is in how easy it makes getting the photos off your device after you upload them to cloud. In Google Photos:
1. Your photos will start getting backed up after you open the app. Once completed, you simply the "free up space" tab in the left-hand menu to find out exactly how many of your photos and videos are backed up allowing the app to start the process of removing them for you.
How long this all takes will vary on your internet connection, how many photos and videos you have, and how large those files are.
2. After that's finished, the second part is fairly quick. The app will alert you to go the iOS Photos app's "Recently Deleted" folder which you can find by by opening the Photos app, selecting "Albums" on the bottom right and then going to the one labeled "Recently Deleted."
Once there, tap "Select" in the top right corner and then "Delete All" in the bottom left corner and it'll fully remove the photos from your phone.
Doing this last week saved me roughly 17GB in space on my iPhone 6S Plus.
Again, don't worry about your photos and videos, you can still find them in the Google Photos app or on google.com/photos. But if you are someone who constantly is taking pictures this could be a lifesaver.
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Follow Eli Blumenthal on Twitter @eliblumenthal