If you saw the earlier report that Pixel phones would be exempt from the Google Photos storage changes, the bad news is that this only applies to current Pixel devices and not future devices.
According to a report from 9To5Google and confirmed by Android Police, future Pixel phones will not be exempt from the storage changes to Photos. That’s going to be a letdown for anyone who buys whatever the next available Pixel phone will be.
But the silver lining perhaps is that this does indeed mean Pixel 5, and all previous Pixel generation phones will get to keep unlimited storage for photos in high quality.
Future Pixel phones will lose unlimited storage after the Photos changes in June 2021
Unfortunately, any Pixel devices that Google releases in 2021 and onward will be shafted by the search company’s arguably horrible (for the consumer) decision to force its users to upgrade storage amounts.
If you’re like some users, you may already subscribe to Google One. And if you like to have enough space and not need it as opposed to need the space and not have it, then you probably aren’t impacted too much by the changes that Google is making.
If you look at things that way, chances are you may already have enough storage to begin with. Meaning you can continue being blissfully unaware of Google’s new plan to increase revenue.
But who it will impact is anyone who doesn’t have the extra money to pay for a subscription to Google One. Especially since one of the major selling points of a Pixel device has always been the unlimited storage for high quality photos.
Since this only impacts future Pixel devices, there’s one way around this inevitable change for the time being.
Buy a Pixel 5 as soon as you can
Phones have been increasingly more valued as the camera of choice for many people these days. For numerous reasons.
For one, the cameras have really become quite good on some of the top phones. Pixel phones are among those, and have routinely, year after year, come with the top rated cameras. It’s one of the other main reasons to buy a Pixel phone. The excellent quality photos. Another reason is because they’re so much more portable than actual cameras.
If you fall into this camp of users who reaches for their phone before a DSLR, you’ll want to buy a Pixel 5 as soon as possible. Since it was just released it’s got the latest tech as well as a top rated camera, and it gets software updates for the next three versions of Android.
In grabbing the Pixel 5 you can at least ensure that you’ll have unlimited storage on high quality pictures until you need to upgrade. Which should be a few years from now.