I've been an iPhone user for five years,
I have an iPhone 6s with only 16 gigabytes of storage,
and iCloud is driving me nuts because
I'm at a point where I literally
can't take any more photos or videos.
The only thing I really know about my iCloud
is that it's full.
It tells me that I haven't backed up my phone
in over a year, so it's been a long time.
Yeah, it's constantly a balance of like,
taking an app away so that I can download a new one.
Venmo, especially.
Every single time I download it, I like, do a transaction
and then I delete it immediately,
because that's the only amount of space I have left.
Yeah, I think there's probably three things
that take up my phone the most.
Just a ton of text messages, pictures,
and yeah, there's some videos on there.
I find it hard to keep videos because I just
literally have no space whatsoever left.
I've reached my limit.
And then it drives me nuts too, cause I can't delete
certain other apps that come on an iPhone,
that I never use like the Health app.
I'm never gonna use that in my life.
The only thing I have are the very basics.
I mean, I guess I could delete IMDb, but I don't want to.
I just know there is a better way,
and I'm always getting these messages about
how I haven't backed up my phone,
or how I can't take a picture right now.
And it's the worst when you're in the moment,
like at a concert, or trying to do something,
and just trying to capture a moment that's happening
and then you take one picture then you go
to take a second one and there's like no more storage.
Oh yeah, I get multiple notifications every single day
about how I haven't backed up my phone.
Literally just one second ago someone asked me
to take a video, and so I had a person film it
and then they tried to AirDrop it to me,
but I couldn't accept the AirDrop.
I just had no more space to accept it.
Those things happen all the time to me.
And it's really embarrassing.
And one of the notifications is like
do you want to buy more iCloud storage space,
and I just don't like the idea of doing that.
Cause I don't want to pay in perpetuity for iCloud space.
Yes, to the people who say that I just need
to get more storage, I hear you and I don't disagree,
but I just think that there should be a better way
for people who don't have that much storage
or, you know, can't afford more storage.
I mean I've heard of Google Photos from
people who have Google phones,
and it was only, I think last week, that I heard
that it was available on iOS.
I just had no idea.
So I feel like this could change my life.
So I've been using Google Photos for about a week now,
and it's been great!
The positives were immediate, almost.
I checked my settings and I had suddenly
1.79 gigabytes of space, so almost 2 gigs
that I didn't have before.
So, since switching over to Google Photos
I've re-downloaded a ton of apps.
I have Venmo on my phone now
which I don't have to ever delete,
Uber, I don't have to delete that anymore,
I re-downloaded Slack,
I downloaded that really cool Huji app,
I re-downloaded Twitter, so I get to say
all my random thoughts now.
I can take multiple selfies at once
and then choose the one I want.
A lot of frivolous things, I can now do once again.
I was hanging out with friends on Thursday night,
and I was like, "I will download Seamless,
and I will buy the food for everyone."
So I felt very proud of that moment.
I literally haven't updated any of my apps
for, like at least six months.
So the fact that I had space now,
I was able to update my apps.
I did not know you could do so many things on Instagram
that I didn't know about!
I haven't had a single message telling me
that my storage is about to run out this entire week.
So that's been great.
The search is actually pretty cool.
So I searched, "dog" and all my pictures
from the Costa Rican dog park pulled up.
And then I typed in - so then I gave it a harder test
and typed in, "costume" and all of my Halloween costumes
popped up, which was pretty impressive.
I don't think I miss anything from iCloud.
It's like, it didn't help me do anything
or accomplish any goals, it just really annoyed me
because I was always running out of space.
So no, I don't miss iCloud even a little bit.
And yeah, these are just keepsakes like nice memories, so
I don't really mind the downgraded quality
especially if I don't have to pay for it.
It's all good in my book.
If any iPhone user is in a predicament like me
where they have to keep on deleting things
just to make it all work, this is an amazing option
because it'll just free up space for you.
I feel like I could keep this current phone
which I will admit is very old already
because it only has 16 gigs.
But it makes me feel like I don't have to
update my phone, which is great.
I mean, even if you aren't sure about if you should switch
to Google Photos or you're worried about it,
I would at least check it out.
Because for me the benefits are huge.
So imagine the money you would save just by buying-
or no, imagine the money you'll save
just by downloading a free app.
It's huge!