We take a ton of photos on our Android smartphones. With smartphones coming out with stellar cameras, there is no need to carry a digital camera with you anymore. However, a good photo backup app for Android is needed to protect those memories. A lot of people simply store their precious photos on the microSD card or even the internal storage of the smartphone and then their phone gets damaged and they are all lost. Believe me, you don’t want your baby pictures to be gone due to an electronic malfunction. Believe me, you don’t want your baby pictures to be gone due to an electronic malfunction.
There are a lot of options for backing up files on Android and yes, this also includes photos and videos. A lot of people are concerned about the security of those uploaded files and how it is managed. Let me be clear here, anything can be hacked if sufficient time and resources are put into it. So, if you are a government official, I highly recommend that you don’t upload sensitive information on any of the cloud services. However, a lot of photo backup apps for Android have great security measures put into place to avoid any of that unpleasantness. In fact, Android itself enforces certain security measures on apps that access your device. Is there a reason not to trust a cloud storage app? Absolutely not! because with high-end encryption protocols working for your security, hacking your dog’s pictures is simply not worth it.
This article is not about the best photo backup apps for Android, this is all about a singular app that provides you quality service as well as top-notch security features. Many of you may already be aware of Dropbox; it is one of the biggest photo storage apps available on the Android platform. The Samsung users especially love how well integrated this app is into the stock TouchWiz interface. After having personally used this app for around four years now, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is one of the best photo backup apps for Android. This also includes a handy interface, as well as a top grade security system. Let’s talk about the security measures this app takes in order to protect your photos stored in the cloud.
Dropbox Security Measures
The first line of defense comes from the two-step authentication which is highly recommended. It basically allows you to use two different kinds of authentications in order to access your account from a new device. All the files kept on the Dropbox servers are encrypted by AES 256 bit encryption. For those who don’t know what this encryption means, AES stands for Advanced Encryption Standard. In theory, it is not because of the massive combinations of keys. Simply using brute force will take a very long time to crack the encryption for a singular file. So, as far as security goes, all of your files are kept quite safe on the Dropbox server. In the point to be noted here is that the encryption is done on the server not on your smartphone so, there are no additional resources consumed during the upload process.
Device Coverage
Dropbox is available not only on Android but a vast array of different platforms as well. When you are investing in a long-term photo backup solution, you would want to make it as the first time as possible. Dropbox is perhaps the only photo backup solution that is available on Blackberry, Linux, Windows, macOS and iOS.
Of course, it is also available on Windows as well as Android platforms. The best thing is, the service uses different interfaces for its desktop and mobile versions. There are certain things that are far easier to do on the desktop than on a small smartphone screen. You will be easily able to access all your stored files across a number of different devices with ease. Google Photos is another backup storage that comes close in terms of versatility and ease-of-use.
Storage Options
The free basic account of Dropbox comes with a small 2 GB of storage space. If you are going to store low-resolution photos on the cloud, this is not a problem but if you are capturing high-resolution images, this storage space will fill up fast. Another interesting feature of Dropbox is that it offers 500 MB of additional storage space with each friend you recommend. You can gain up to 16 GB by simply recommending this app to your buddies. Make a Mailbox account and you’ll be getting one more GB of storage space. You also get 250 MB simply by taking the tour of Dropbox basics. But you are here for photo storage and not about other files. Dropbox gives you three GB of additional space automatically when you activate the photos backup option. This amounts to a rather large free offspring of storage space, more than a lot of common Android users will use.
If you are going to store a lot of more images, you can easily opt for a 1 TB plan for just around nine dollars per month. Of course, you can easily increase the storage space with additional payments but one terabyte for photos is a lot unless you are storing DSLR images.
Honorable Mention – Google Photos
Google Photos does come close in terms of security features. It also uses the same encryption that Dropbox uses, so it is as secure as Dropbox. But the upload speeds of Dropbox are simply remarkable and provide a quality service to the users. I highly recommend that you also check out Google photos and do backups on both devices. This will make your photos a lot more secure than simply using one service. After all, all of these photo storage options are completely free. Rumor is, Google Photos will allow unlimited storage space for Nexus device users, which is a great move by Google. But until it is confirmed, Dropbox remains one of the best options in terms of security.
Conclusion
Having used the service for the past four years, I have to say that I have grown accustomed to Dropbox. I have used Google Photos as well but I still prefer to use the straightforward interface of Dropbox. Do tell me what you think about this app in the comments below. I would love to compare opinions. If you have any kind of questions or are curious about the security of the app, please feel free to ask us in the comments as well.
