Google Photos is vastly becoming a popular app among users. In fact, earlier this month Google announced that it was now being used by more than 200 million active users. Which is not too bad seeing the app is barely a year old. However, with anything that ages, it is going to get better and if a recent teardown of the latest version of Google Photos by Android Police is anything to go by, it is about to get a lot better.
The biggest change suggested by the teardown is to do with the use of unlimited photo backups. Anyone who uses the app will know that Google does offer backing up of an unlimited number of photos for free, although there is a catch – not at their full resolution. Instead, the photos (and videos) are optimized by being scaled down. Those who want to retain their images (or videos) at their original and full resolution can do so, but at a cost against their Google cloud storage limit. Although that looks as though it will be changing for Nexus owners. As a few of the code strings do seem to be clearly suggesting that Nexus device owners will be able to make use of free unlimited backups for full resolution (original quality) images and videos. Not a bad addition and presumably another motivational benefit to buying a Nexus smartphone.
If you do not own a Nexus smartphone or do not plan to buy one, then although you might not be able to make use of the headline feature, it does seem that there are a number of other features set to become available as well. One of which is an improved ability to sort albums in Photos. This improvement will allow for specific sort orders like newest or oldest first, as well as other options. Another noted incoming feature is the ability to adjust contrast and exposure while in an editing mode. While Photos does already offer an editing feature, its editing options will be expanded to include these two new options.
As mentioned, these features are not yet live and are only being noted in the code of the latest version of the app. So while they are there, they could be subject to change or take their time in being turned on. The app version in question is version 1.21 and is different to the version which came about last week and brought with it shared album commenting. If you have yet to receive the update, then you can download the latest version through the link below.
Download Google Photos v1.21