iPhones get free unlimited storage on Google Photos at original quality, while Pixel 4 gets left behind (Updated)

[vanished]

1 minute ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Because Google knows WebP is a format with dubious usefulness, hardware and software-wise. Hell, WebM is hardly a container format with actual usefulness outside of a web browser. 

The same could be said for HEIC, but at least Apple makes an effort to support it with their hardware to make it more useful than JPEG.

The thing that bugs me about image support is it's so trivially easy to do.  It doesn't require any special hardware, just a software update, which are done all the time anyway.  Compare that to a video format and it's a totally different story.  Video formats actually do require hardware updates to be well supported, especially on mobile devices where performance and power are limited, and yet despite this we have made a lot more progress in video formats over the years than we have for images.

[Thaldor]

1 hour ago, RedRound2 said:

If HEIC/HEIF indeed takes up much lower space compared to traditional jpeg, I can't possibly understand why Google hasn't already shifted to HEIF and HEVC by default on android. I'm aware of the licensing stuff, but if Apple's able to do it, google should also be able to. They could save so much storage space if they did shift, especially since Google Photos has turned into defacto photo back up software.

Mostly because MPEG-formats have always been kind of mass splitting formats because using them has always been paying for the competitor and their support has always been kind of limited compared to some competing formats. JPEG (and RAW-formats) has been the most common photo format so long that it has support everywhere and kind of everyone on the field is scared what kind of hell is going to get loose when the big companies start to fight over whos format will surpass the JPEG. Google is coming with their WebP which initially seemed very promising but with VP8-encoding was even worse than JPEG and with VP8L-encoding starts to close JPEG in filesizes (and the image quality is still 50/50 if it's better than JPEG). There are some open and free formats incoming (FLIF and AVIF) but their situation in the markets are still unknown, mostly because there might be another great format war incoming and usually then the free and open solutions are crushed when the big boys start to test who has the most money to throw away.

 

Then there is the big elephant still in the room called HTML5 and H.264 vs. OGG. Google now returning to the H.264 team with starting to use HEIC would be kind of comical when they doors slamming left that team and joined the OGG team and even developed the whole VP8-encoding for them to say "Fuck you" to the MPEGs licensing scheme. Even after Cisco getting enough of the shitting in cereals by Apple, Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Opera and everybody either cutting support for the other format and adding more support for the other, went and basicly bought the H.264 binaries for everyone to use for free, there is still a lot of bad blood on the field (mainly Google, Apple and Mozilla, Google pushing their VP8, Apple refusing to use the OpenH264 binaries in iOS because downloading and using third party is bad for them, they might even once seem to play nice with other kids in the sandbox and Mozilla just being a super ball and bouncing between prefering OpenH264 over VP8 over whatever and sometimes even prefering Flash over anything because some odd reasons between hardware and software support and good knows why).

 

Also who the hell leaves their images to some cloud after fappening and other shit? Didn't you learn anything?

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, suicidalfranco said:

moving it so far you left the stadium chief

LMAO, on what fucking planet dude? Their storage is that dirty cheap because they make money of what you store on it. Like, how is that not crystal clear to you after all this time seeing what Google does? But hey, keep on screaming how I'm moving goal posts... LOL

[mxk]

2 hours ago, TheGlenlivet said:

 

barf

[Zodiark1593]

I don't buy the computation argument one bit. If computational power was a factor, why not just compress images on the client device? Bandwidth savings would be far more significant a factor in having iPhones stick to original files.

 

I would like to see a move to a newer image format on Android and Windows soon. 7-10 MB per picture is not trivial when there are many hundreds or thousands on a device.

[DrMacintosh]

I'm not giving Google my noods. 

[DrMacintosh]

2 hours ago, mxk said:

barf

It's actually a very quality dongle. It's just.....dongly.....

[Fnige]

24 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

It's actually a very quality dongle. It's just.....dongly.....

aint used to sticking things to things just to be able to stick the thing into the main thing

[everettrules]

5 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

Source: https://9to5mac.com/2019/10/17/google-photos-iphone-loophole-free-unlimited-storage-orig-quality/

 

In a stupidly funny news today, Google Photos automatically store images from iPhones at original quality because trying to compress HEIC/HEIF images (the format modern iPhones have been defaulting to for years now) actually increases the size of the file

If HEIC/HEIF indeed takes up much lower space compared to traditional jpeg, I can't possibly understand why Google hasn't already shifted to HEIF and HEVC by default on android. I'm aware of the licensing stuff, but if Apple's able to do it, google should also be able to. They could save so much storage space if they did shift, especially since Google Photos has turned into defacto photo back up software.

 

Nonetheless, it's still quite hilarious especially since Pixel 4 was curiously dropped out of this highlight service

ooph

[mxk]

44 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

It's actually a very quality dongle. It's just.....dongly.....

I will keep using my cassette walkman if it means headphone jack

[Founders]

9 minutes ago, mxk said:

I will keep using my cassette walkman if it means headphone jack

Honestly the only time I plug my phone in is to charge it, I don't understand why people are still mad about a 3.5mm jack. If it means that much to you use the adapter and be done with it. 

[williamcll]

Never hurts to clean up your photos every so often.

 

That or use sites like imgur or even this very website to store your photos if privacy is not a concern.

[mxk]

55 minutes ago, Ehmc130 said:

Honestly the only time I plug my phone in is to charge it, I don't understand why people are still mad about a 3.5mm jack. If it means that much to you use the adapter and be done with it. 

?? everyone has different feelings about it

 

its a little weird to say I don't understand when everyone has different situations.

 

I use my jack a lot, I just don't want to give it up yet.

[SkilledRebuilds]

I'm ignorant.

Are bluetooth headsets sound quality as clean as my Phones DAC+ 3.5mm jack signals?

 

Whether CHEAP or Not..  I can't justify good CANS because Bluetooth Quality could be lacking...again I'm ignorant.

 

So.. Realistically... quality matters as always, but does it on the hardware level choosing Bluetooth over Wired Cans...

 

I prefer the jack for simplicity on other sound systems I have.. rock up ,Jack in, turn up, I understand adapters offer this too.

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

I'm ignorant.

Are bluetooth headsets sound quality as clean as my Phones DAC+ 3.5mm jack signals?

 

Whether CHEAP or Not..  I can't justify good CANS because Bluetooth Quality could be lacking...again I'm ignorant.

 

So.. Realistically... quality matters as always, but does it on the hardware level choosing Bluetooth over Wired Cans...

 

I prefer the jack for simplicity on other sound systems I have.. rock up ,Jack in, turn up, I understand adapters offer this too.

Sound is subjective, for me (battle of averages as there are always a few exceptions to the rule), From the headphones I have listened too I would say you need spring an extra $100 to get BT and have the same sound.    I could pose a few reasons for this but I haven;t looked into it and I don't really care to. 

 

 

[RedRound2]

17 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

Yeah only having 5GB is dumb, but 50GB should be more than enough for photos. I use Google photos,and backup stuff on a microSD in the phone.

Apple could totally give you more free storage, 5GB is ridiculous nowadays,and giving you 50GB wouldn't lose them any money. Not for no reason though, the privacy argument always gets brought up regarding Google and I find it ironic people concerned enough to get an iPhone are just throwing their personal photos up on Google photos.

5GB is ridiculous, I agree. But giving 50GB wouldn't lose them any money is also a false statement. That's 50GB in 1 billion + iOS users. That's would cost them a ton. And there's really no RoI, unlike Google who actually uses the data to do evil things that we've come to accept about Google at this point. In that way, google is just unbeatable, just because of some of the practises they do that Apple swore not to.

 

If there are people who care about privacy, they wouldn't back up to Google Photos. But most people prefer convenience, and of all the user data collecting companies, Google is no doubt the most trustworthy among facebook, microsoft, etc. I recently lost my phone to complete water damage, and apart from the last few photos, all of the previous ones were already safely backed up into Photos

17 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

It's true that it's not well supported, but the same can be said about Apple's format, probably to an even higher degree.  No browser I've tried has struggled with webp, in fact they're most likely to work compared with built-in image viewers in my experience.  With that said it wouldn't surprise me at all if safari had issues, that's just how it is lol lacking format support is something of a distinguishing feature for them.

HEIC is supported by Windows, Google photos and most popular apps after Apple adopted it. If google does too, everyone will adopt it.

17 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

they probably dont use HEIC by default because not much supports it yet. you should be glad that google doesnt just convert it to a JPG and store it at 1080p like they do with everyone else

It is enabled by default.

17 hours ago, mr moose said:

I just looked at a 5 or 6 in my local and they all had them. 

Obviously i didn't mean that every single phone in the market doesn't have them. All high end flagships have abandoned it, and it's just a matter of time till only very few specific variants of phones will have it

[RejZoR]

I didn't even know HEIC is used on an iPhone. I'm using some cloud storage as backup which automatically converts backups to JPEG, and since it has virtual drive I usually access my photos directly through it in Windows Explorer. I only noticed it when I sent an image directly from phone and I couldn't open it in some image app. Then I learned they are using some different format.

[vanished]

2 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

HEIC is supported by Windows, Google photos and most popular apps after Apple adopted it. If google does too, everyone will adopt it.

Hm, well this seems to be true now which has caught me off guard as that was definitely not the case last time I checked, which I didn't think was that long ago.

Edit: actually it's not quite so clear cut, google photos seems to work on desktop but not the android app.

[spartaman64]

2 hours ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Hm, well this seems to be true now which has caught me off guard as that was definitely not the case last time I checked, which I didn't think was that long ago.

Edit: actually it's not quite so clear cut, google photos seems to work on desktop but not the android app.

 

4 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

5GB is ridiculous, I agree. But giving 50GB wouldn't lose them any money is also a false statement. That's 50GB in 1 billion + iOS users. That's would cost them a ton. And there's really no RoI, unlike Google who actually uses the data to do evil things that we've come to accept about Google at this point. In that way, google is just unbeatable, just because of some of the practises they do that Apple swore not to.

 

If there are people who care about privacy, they wouldn't back up to Google Photos. But most people prefer convenience, and of all the user data collecting companies, Google is no doubt the most trustworthy among facebook, microsoft, etc. I recently lost my phone to complete water damage, and apart from the last few photos, all of the previous ones were already safely backed up into Photos

HEIC is supported by Windows, Google photos and most popular apps after Apple adopted it. If google does too, everyone will adopt it.

It is enabled by default.

Obviously i didn't mean that every single phone in the market doesn't have them. All high end flagships have abandoned it, and it's just a matter of time till only very few specific variants of phones will have it

its only supported on android P and later and lots of phones are not updated to android P

[Guest]

22 hours ago, mr moose said:

I just looked at a 5 or 6 in my local and they all had them. 

You're not joking. You can still buy the SE and 5C brand new in NZ. 

[mr moose]

5 hours ago, RedRound2 said:

Obviously i didn't mean that every single phone in the market doesn't have them. All high end flagships have abandoned it, and it's just a matter of time till only very few specific variants of phones will have it

Oh well, that must make it a legitimate case of obsolete technology that no one wants any more.   

 

[RedRound2]

9 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

its only supported on android P and later and lots of phones are not updated to android P

Well, only modern phones needs to support it. Again, my question is why can't all images and photos taken by any one of today's mid range to high flagship take in HEVC and HEIC format. It would save google tons of storage, it would save us all a lot of local storage, plus HEIC has a ton more features than JPEGs. HEIC/HEVC is quite ubiquitous now and I believe Google should just adopt it at this point rather than forcing a format wars

7 hours ago, mr moose said:

Oh well, that must make it a legitimate case of obsolete technology that no one wants any more.   

Go on, scream out in the open air what you just said. That will make all the difference. It's not coming back. Move on. All manufacturers are abandoning it and general consumers have moved onto wireless for most part

[vanished]

4 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

Well, only modern phones needs to support it.

Well, no, if the format is going to take over the world and replace jpg, it needs to be supported by everything.

4 minutes ago, RedRound2 said:

Again, my question is why can't all images and photos taken by any one of today's mid range to high flagship take in HEVC and HEIC format. It would save google tons of storage, it would save us all a lot of local storage, plus HEIC has a ton more features than JPEGs. HEIC/HEVC is quite ubiquitous now and I believe Google should just adopt it at this point rather than forcing a format wars

This is true, it's time to move on to something.  So long as it's superior to jpg and open source, just pick something and go, I don't care.  I'm not sure google is even in a format war though, that would imply they're actually trying to push their own format which I don't see them actually doing webp exists but it's not catching on and no one is pushing it.

[Guest]

iPhone users:

Spoiler

 

[Trixanity]

I imagine Google is waiting for AV1 to be complete and adopted so they can (hardware) accelerate photo and video across both client and server systems.

Problem is it'll still be a long wait to get there.