Google Photos Upload Size Battery Usage

[Ali Ashcroft-Spurr]

Hi All

I've recently decided to use Google Photos on my Galaxy Note 4 to upload my photos to Google Drive.

Since I've just started this, I had over 7000 to upload, but it's all free as long as you upload "high quality" so great!

Unfortunately, it's taking an extremely long time and causing my phone to get extremely hot and rip through battery, so I wondered: Is this because I chose "high quality" rather than "original quality"? Presumably, "high quality" uploads require my phone to create a downscaled copy of each picture (using processing power), upload that, then delete it. if I had chosen "original quality" it would simply upload the photo (no copying, processing and deleting).

That's not the end of the world in the short term, but once this initial upload is done, will "Photos" still rip through my battery while uploading in this quality? Is the battery usage significantly lower if I choose "original quality"?

In terms of storage space, there's obviously a huge difference, but because this is a "sync" not a "back up" as soon as I delete them from my phone, they'll be gone from Google Drive too. Therefore if I only have around 15GB of photos on my phone at any one time, I'll never go over the free limit for "original photos".

Sorry for rambling... any help re battery usage appreciated...

Thanks

Ali

 

[Rukbat]

The larger the file (photo, spreadsheet, anything), the longer it takes to upload at a given speed. The longer you're uploading, the more battery you use.

Try backing everything up to your computer. Faster, less battery and you don't need an internet connection to get them. (And you can delete them from the phone without affecting the computer - just ask the guy who ended up with a hard-bricked phone. It took about half an hour to get the replacement back to where the bad one had been - all apps, all files, etc.)

 

[Ali Ashcroft-Spurr]

I've got a kind of two-prong backup system. The first is everything that can be backed up over wifi gets backed up over wifi. The second is a full backup to my PC whenever I get chance (once a month or so).

This way, if I lost my phone or it was destroyed, I'd only lose content up to the last time I was in a wifi zone (so half a day at most). If I just backed up to my PC I'd lose up to a month's worth (I also back up the PC backup on an external hard drive that I store at my in-laws house - no way I'm losing my wedding photos etc.)

Back on the subject of "high quality" or "original quality"... Obviously upload time is a factor, that's why I think it's a difficult question to answer. My feeling is that the processing power it takes to resize each image would use more battery than uploading for a few more seconds for each image (they really don't take that long to upload). Does anyone know what's actually happening during the upload? Are they uploaded in full size, then resized by Google after they get to their server? Is the process more streamlined in some way?