Google Photos - Is it the right photo backup solution for your mobile device?

[HAN]

First off, I am a big fan of Google Products. Yes, they make money from us users of their apps/programs/products, but my feeling is that they give a good valued product/user experience in return. But, if a product has some "issues", I'm not blind to it either. Which brings me to Google Photos.

While I've been a serious Android booster in the past, I'm now in the Apple camp. I use the iCloud for photo backups and syncs between devices. But iCloud isn't free if you go over 5 GB in data. So I began to look around for a cheap, reliable alternative.

It didn't take long to see the most mentioned cheap/free service is Google Photos. It has apps for iOS and Android, dedicated computer apps and a browser based interface. It promises to backup and sync your photos for all devices you use it with, along with having all your photos available for viewing on all those same devices. But I discovered there are a couple of key things missing that we all assume are there.

1st, Google Photos copies photos to the cloud. It does not "backup". Backup implies the ability to restore what has been backed up. When used on an Android or iOS device, Google Photos can only restore/download a local copy... one at a time! So if you had 500 photos on your phone and the phone dies, the only way you get your photos back on the phone for offline viewing is one at a time. Not a true "restore" by any means.

2nd, beyond backup, Google Photos says it "syncs" your photos. And it does check to see if it has a copy of all local photos from your connected device. So technically, that may be what they call syncing. But for me, syncing is having the same data between the cloud and ALL devices using the service. This it does not do. If you have photos A and B on device 1 and photos C and D on device 2, the Google Photos cloud has all four (A,B,C and D) but the offline photos for both devices are unchanged.

This post is already way too long but I wanted to illustrate the (IMO) severe short comings of Google Photos. It doesn't really backup your photos. It doesn't really sync your photos either. It's really just an online photo viewer. If that's what you're after, it's excellent at that. But if you want your photos truly backed up and synced across devices, Google Photos is the wrong app. (Android users especially beware. If you have been using Google Photos for your phone/tablet backup solution, and your phone dies, you have countless hours ahead of you to restore your photos back to your device. One at a time!)