With the launch of the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge this year, Samsung raised the stakes yet again with their flagship devices. Although they didn’t really update the outside design of the phones from last year’s Galaxy S6 lineup, they fine-tuned the software even more and upgraded the hardware to make for an overall better experience. Part of this enhancement revolves around Samsung’s Motion Photos which are similar to the live photos you’ll find on the new iPhones. Although they were never really advertised much, they’re a neat little functionality that Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge users should definitely experiment with and check out.
Up until now, there has never been a native way to share the motion photos that were captured, however, there was an app which was released into the Play Store at the end of last month called Motion Photo Sharer which allowed users to share them with friends and family. Samsung has recently updated both the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge to now include a native option for sharing these pictures so a third-party app isn’t needed, although users are still of course welcome to download and install them instead of using the native option if they like, it just isn’t a requirement any longer.
Now that the native option is part of the software, when users open up Motion Photos they can simply hit the share button and they’ll be given the option to share it as a video file so other users can see the live motion, or they can share it as a regular picture. Regardless of how users choose to share it, motion photos can be shared with a number of different apps whether through messaging or to different social networks such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The software update that includes native sharing started rolling out a few days ago or around the beginning of this week, so most users should already have the update installed on their devices. If not, you can always check for things manually and see if you can pull down the software update by checking it from settings, then about phone.