The Amazon Cloud Drive Photo App is a new release for the App Store, having been introduced to iOS this past week. It is a free download, and costs nothing to download, install, and use. These alone are excellent points, but the Amazon Cloud Drive is more than these factors alone.
The following Amazon Cloud Drive Photo App Review looks to point out the good, the bad, and the needed improvements to this wonderful app.
Before the criticisms of the app, I would like to point out the positive. The Amazon Cloud Drive Photo App does as the name suggests: it is an application that stores your photos from your photo application into Amazon’s cloud storage. This is huge benefit if you need to make some storage space on your iPhone, for example. If you are like me and rely on 16GB devices often, you realize how quickly your memory storage can be depleted – considering that some of your favorite games require 500MB to 1GB of memory storage. You’re going to need to move files off those devices, and probably sooner than later.
When you purchase a 16GB iPhone 5 from the Apple Store, you realize right away that the internal memory storage will not be completely available. You must always factor in the operating system, which removes some of your free storage from personal access.
If you go to your settings icon, select “general,” then “About,” you can scroll down to your memory capacity and notice that a 16GB iPhone 5, for example, only has 13.5GB of free storage to use. Apple’s operating system only occupies 2.5GB of storage, which is still quite a bit of memory you pay for that you cannot use.
If you think that 2.5GB of iOS operating system space is bad, look at Android: in addition to my iPhone 5, I also own a Samsung Galaxy S3, which requires 5GB of storage for the operating system and software. Fortunately for me, I purchased a 32GB device with my phone carrier and never consume all of my memory storage.
With all of Samsung’s software features, it is not surprising that 5GB of storage space belong to all of Samsung’s features and TouchWiz user interface. On a 32GB device of Apple’s, you would likely have more memory storage than on a Samsung device (or even a Google device for that matter). In short, operating systems occupy a significant amount of free memory storage.
It is due to the affordability of 16GB devices and the space occupied by either iOS, Android, or Windows OS that consumers look to cloud storage as their next resort. In a memory storage emergency, look no further than Amazon’s Cloud Drive App.
The Good About Amazon’s Cloud Drive Photo App
The Amazon Cloud Drive Photo App provides 5GB of free cloud storage. That’s right: from the moment you download the free app, you have an instantaneous 5GB of storage for your photos. You do not have to sign up for a special service, or pay a special free for cloud storage.
Amazon is following in the footsteps of successful cloud storage providers such as DropBox, who provides 5GB of free cloud storage to signees from the moment they sign up for the service.
One thing I suggest doing when you open the app is read the instructions presented to you. If I remember correctly, you have to accept Amazon’s terms in order to use the app and cloud storage, so take time to read Amazon’s terms. There is not only a free service, but also trial and paid services in Amazon’s Cloud Drive Photo app.
If you decide to partake of a trial service, Amazon will deduct payments from your bank account after the trial period is over. Note that Amazon requires a credit card, not a debit card, in order to pay for cloud storage services and undergo a trial agreement.
If you only rely on debit cards, as I do, you may be better off sticking with Amazon’s free 5GB of cloud storage – or you may want to consider other cloud storage providers, one of which I’ll cover near the end of this review.
Next, the Amazon Cloud Drive Photo App is fast and efficient. When I downloaded the Amazon Cloud Drive Photo app, (download the photo app here) I selected the upload option to allow my 549 photos (on my local memory storage) to be uploaded onto the Amazon Cloud Drive app. I left the main room of my apartment for five minutes and, after I came back, the photos had already uploaded to Amazon’s cloud storage. This means that you will not have to wait forever to upload your photos.
In this, Amazon’s Cloud Drive Photo app is different from Google’s unlimited photo storage in its Google + app. If you use Google +’s unlimited photo storage capacity with your iPhone 5, for example, it will take forever to upload your photos to Google +. The same can be said for iPad users who rely on Google + for unlimited photo storage.
An Android device will upload photos to Google + right away, in a matter of minutes, but iDevices do not experience the same fortune. Amazon’s Cloud Drive Photo App works immediately to save you the trouble of worrying about photo uploads. After uploading the existing photos to your free cloud storage, the photo app will then upload new photos as they are added to your camera roll.
Another strength of the Amazon Cloud Drive Photo App that is to be applauded is its cloud/device switch, that allows you to move back and forth between your camera roll and the photos in the cloud.
This is an important feature that should not be overlooked, because it provides the convenience of knowing what’s on your camera roll without having to leave the Amazon Cloud Drive app to check your camera roll and return to it when you want to continue work in the Cloud Drive app. This may be standard on many cloud storage applications, but it is one of note with Amazon’s Cloud Drive Photo App. It means that you will not sacrifice convenience to use Amazon’s cloud storage.
The settings section of the application provides additional benefits, since it provides you with the amount of storage consumed and the amount remaining at all times. It also provides some auto-save capabilities, giving you the choice of whether to save over Wi-Fi only or Wi-Fi + Cellular.
This is a common feature that belongs in all cloud storage applications, since many individuals do not have an unlimited data plan and could easily consume data if they choose to use auto-save. There is also a background saving feature that allows the Amazon Cloud Drive App to save photos – even when the app is closed.
You can also monitor your uploads and downloads to know if your photos have uploaded or downloaded quickly or still need some time to perform. As I said, my photos uploaded quickly, even with 549 to upload at once. I have yet to try the photo download, but you should get a similar or equal result.
For those who want to send feedback on the app, should they experience any problems, you have a “send feedback” function right within the settings section. If you click on it, it will bring up an email format that has the address and subject already provided. All you need to do is state the problem and click “send.” This is a really neat feature that does not make you jump from one page to another, or even go online to Amazon.com, in order to work.
While these are excellent features and necessary ones, too, Amazon’s Cloud App is missing a few things.
The Bad: What’s Missing in the Amazon Cloud Drive Photo App
Now that I’ve gotten the excellent features out of the way, let’s get to the bad. Amazon’s app does provide 5GB of free cloud storage, but there are other cloud storage apps such as Google Drive that provide a free 15GB of cloud storage. It is no mistake that Google has become a powerhouse in the Android community and in providing seamless, integrated web services. What makes Google’s Cloud Drive app stand out from Amazon’s is that Google not only provides more cloud storage than Amazon (15GB free) or photos (as does Amazon), but that Google also provides storage for documents and even allows you to edit documents and Google docs while in the Google Drive app. Amazon’s got a great cloud storage app that does basic things, but the company will have to advance in its cloud storage services in order to compete with the likes of Google.
Still, for free, the app is definitely worth your time and attention. It’s got 5GB of free cloud storage to offer which does not consume 5GB of your internal memory storage, unlike Apple’s very own iCloud service.
Most people do not know this, but the free 5GB of cloud storage Apple claims to provide is really nothing more than 5GB of your own memory storage – 5GB that you’ve already paid for. When you add this to the 2.5GB that iOS consumes, you only have 6GB of storage remaining out of 13.5GB of storage. In other words, nearly half of the free memory storage space is consumed between cloud storage and iOS.
In today’s time, there is a little variety in everything for each of us. If you are a person that wants to have cloud storage but do not want to pay an annual fee, free cloud storage apps are a must-have. Amazon’s cloud storage is one of those; I only hope that, in the future, Amazon will increase its cloud storage to 15GB.
Overall, the app is free, comes with 5GB of cloud storage, and is a speedy and efficient app, but falls short of some goodies that Google Drive offers.
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5
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