Facebook will soon offer instant photo uploads from Android, in testing now
Last month, we told you about an app for Android users that enabled instant photo uploads to Facebook, and now we have just learned that Facebook is experimenting with that very feature right now in its own Android app. However, as is often the case with new Facebook features, this is only available to a very select group of users, although Facebook will probably gradually expand availability once it is satisfied with the app’s performance.
According to a Facebook help page, the feature works by automatically uploading all photos you take on your phone to a private album on Facebook. You can decide to sync photos over WiFi only, and from there, you can decide which photos to share with your friends – in other words, it duplicates functionality that’s already present in Google+. However, there are two big differences, and they are fairly important: apparently, Facebook is only giving users 2GB of free private photo storage, although this limit will not apply to pictures you choose to share publicly. Additionally, when syncing over 3G or 4G, photos are shrunk down to about 100K.
And that’s why I’m not going to stop using Google+ for my automatic photo storage backup.
Google+ provides users with unlimited photo backup, and you don’t have to share photos in order to get that unlimited storage. And while Google does downsize the photos it uploads, it’s not nearly as bad as 100K.
However, since this new Facebook feature is still in development, it’s possible that Facebook might change these things before it’s released to more people. And I hope it does, because as it stands now, I have a feeling that lots of people are going to avoid this feature due to these serious shortcomings. I know I will.
[Facebook]
