Google Pixel 4 series no longer gets unlimited Google Photos storage at original quality.
Google Photos is a particularly successful app. California-based company offers users cloud storage and backups for their images. If you’re willing to let Google compress your pictures a bit, storage is unlimited and your ‘high quality’ pictures don’t count towards your cloud storage limit. However, if you have an iPhone, it seems that you can take advantage of a format loophole that gives you unlimited storage at ‘original quality’ resolution This isn’t in the case with most other smartphones.
According to a Reddit post by user u/stephenvsawyer, the Apple iPhone series is able to take advantage of a loophole. It lets users store unlimited photos at original resolution on Google Photos. Apple iPhone models can save photos in HEIC format. However, Google’s compression would actually increase the file size of the images.
Therefore, Google photos does not need to compress these images. It can directly back them up as they are. We therefore back up images at ‘original quality’ resolution, even if the user has opted for high-quality (compressed) backups. Notably, this doesn’t apply to videos – which we still back up at 1080p.
Interestingly, the new Google Pixel 4series doesn’t have this feature. This is the first in the Pixel series to do away with a feature that was one of the key selling points of earlier Pixel devices. While older devices continue to enjoy lifetime unlimited backups at original resolution at Google Photos. The facility hasn’t been extended to buyers of the new Pixel smartphones.
