Amazon Prime: Unlimited Cloud Photo Storage Added To Growing List Of Benefits

Amazon.com Inc. on Tuesday offered its Prime customers unlimited photo storage in a plan the company calls Prime Photos. Consumer cloud storage competition is heating up as large tech companies like Amazon, Google and Apple vie over becoming customers’ data destination of choice.

Apple offers iPhone users 5 gigabytes, or roughly 1,000 photos worth of free cloud storage, while Google offers unlimited photos at what it calls “standard” resolution.

Google’s “unlimited” offer caps photo resolutions at less than 5 megabytes, whereas Amazon’s Prime Photos will now accept images of any size. Most smartphone cameras are capable of taking photos with resolutions around 16 megabytes, which can sometimes result in sharper images.

IPhone and Android owners who frequently use the device’s camera often find that their smartphone’s storage can quickly fill up. Apple charges users of its iCloud service $1 per month to increase storage to 20 gigabytes, whereas Google offers 100 gigabytes for $2.

Amazon’s new Prime Photos can take photo uploads from iOS, Android, its own Fire OS devices, as well as Windows PCs. The company says it is developing software for Macs, but says OS X users can currently use their browsers to upload photos.

Amazon says Prime subscribers can view the photos on their TVs through Sony’s PlayStation 3 and 4, as well as “select” smart televisions from LG and Samsung. Amazon Prime subscriptions cost $99 per year, and the company has added a number of new features to the service in the past year, which is best known for free two-day shipping from products sold by the retail giant.