Google’s Photos app is a favorite for Android users, with over a billion users now using the app on a daily basis. For users in areas where high-speed internet access isn’t available, Android’s owner has now unveiled Gallery Go.
Gallery Go is an offline photo app that lets first-time smartphone users find the photos they want and need with little hassle. Gallery Go organizes the photos so that users need not label them or place them in specific albums. It is offline, which means that users don’t need internet data to access their photos. The offline nature of Gallery Go indicates that users won’t have to worry about getting “connect to internet” messages if they find themselves in an area where their internet connection is spotty or nonexistent.
Other features that make Google’s new app a winner are SD card compatibility, simple editing tools, and its light size. Gallery Go works with SD cards, meaning that you can copy photos from Gallery Go to your SD card if you’d like. Next, there are simple editing tools in Gallery Go that exist in Google Photos, so you’re getting something of an equivalent experience in Gallery Go that you’d get in Google’s legendary Photos app: photo filters, auto enhance, rotate and crop, and more.
Last but never least, Gallery Go is lightweight in nature: 10MB in size. The lite nature of the app means that it won’t consume so much space on smartphones, making it ideal for budget-friendly smartphones that don’t have a lot of storage space to start with.
Google’s Gallery Go is but one app the Android owner has designed for smartphones with small storage space. Google has also released Files Go (later rebranded to “Files By Google”) for Android Go smartphone users in developing countries who cannot connect to the internet at fast speeds.
Files By Google consumes less than 10MB on a user’s smartphone, and the app, designed for developing countries, has proven popular in developed countries as well. Google says its Files By Go app now boasts over 30 million active monthly users, as of November 2018.
There is Maps Go, a lite version of Google’s Maps app. Maps Go consumes 100x less the storage space on Android smartphones and provides for over 70+ languages and detailed maps for over 200 countries. YouTube Go is Google’s lite counterpart to the regular YouTube app.
Despite Gallery Go’s appeal to developing countries, users in developed countries will find the photos app to be a good replacement for Google Photos. Google Photos requires a constant internet connection (whether Wi-Fi or cellular data).
Most users don’t have truly unlimited data, which means they’ll have to be on home Wi-Fi before they can sync their local storage with Google Photos. Syncing on cellular data consumes limited LTE data amounts with smartphone carriers, which can lead to a higher wireless bill each month.
Google’s “Go” apps initiative began with Google’s Android Go platform unveiled at Google I/O 2017 two years ago. The platform is designed to be lightweight, with all apps and the Android system itself draining less battery life and consuming less storage than Android typically does. Android Go is designed for budget-friendly phones from the ground up.
Gallery Go is available at the Google Play Store for Android devices running Android 8.1 Oreo and Android 9.0 Pie. The app will come pre-installed on the Itel S15 and Itel A55 devices beginning next month.
