Google I/O 2015: Photos app with unlimited storage is simply a poor attempt to take on Flickr

Google has announced its new revamped Photos app. Earlier integrated within Google+, the company unveiled a standalone app with interesting features at the Google I/O 2015 developers conference. This new feature turned out to be quite a show-stopper thanks  to it offering unlimited photos and video storage. This app will be available for Android, iOS as well as the web. **Click here** to know the interesting features in Photos app. Unlimited storage ~means you can save up to 1000GB or 1TB of photos.~  does not mean you can go about saving unlimited images from your high-res DSLR. Now, here’s the catch - it limits the resolution to 16MP and anything above that will be downscaled to 16MP. Video resolutions higher than 1080p will also be downscaled. In case you want to store your photos in their original size, then the company offers the standard 15GB storage that comes with your Google account. For more storage, you will have to pay $1.99 per month for 100GB and $9.9 per month for 1TB. On the other hand, Apple’s Photo app library offers 5GB of free storage on iCloud, and then one will have to shell out a hefty $240/year for 1TB storage. Dropbox offers 2GB of free space as soon as you sign up, and getting 1TB of storage will cost $99/year. Microsoft’s OneDrive also offers 15GB of base data and will has to pay $84/year for 1TB storage. All in all, Google definitely has an edge over its competitors. Its resolution limitations may suffice for most mobile and amateur photographers, but there are other players offering much more. Popular photo storing and sharing app, Flickr, has much more on offer for users. Just like Google, Flickr also offers storage with an upper limit of 1TB. However, it doesn’t cap the image size to 16MP, rather it goes all the way up to 200-megapixels. Flickr won’t scale down your images and is available for Android, iOS and web. So while Flickr remains a notch above Google’s Photos app, you’ll just have to bear with the annoying ads. With its new app, Google looks like it was probably just trying its best to match up to Flickr. If you are an iOS user, then you aren’t really missing much with the Flickr app. PS: Google Photos offers unlimited storage and there is no 1TB limit. The limit is only on the resolution of images and videos. It was an error on our part, which we deeply regret.