As much as I prefer to shoot film, like pretty much everyone else, I use my cell phone camera for unartistic, basic documentation or when a film camera is not possible to use.

Unlike film photography, my cell phone photography is not very tightly curated. So despite their small file size, over time, it’s easy to accumulate a large digital footprint consisting of everything from family photos to parking space numbers.

It’s good to make a habit of regularly deleting duplicates and photos you took for temporary purposes. But for everything you’d like to hold onto, what is the solution?

Below I’m going to share information on apps that conveniently copy the photo files from your phone to cloud storage plans for redundancy and safe keeping.

iCloud, Samsung Cloud and Google Photos (Limited Storage, Tiered Cost)

I am an iPhone user but every major smart phone maker tethers our devices to a default cloud storage solution, and to my knowledge, they are charged similarly. There’s Samsung Cloud for Samsung devices and Google Photos for Google devices. This go-to mechanism is your first line of defense against losing your images. But it may also be the most costly.

The basic architecture is that your phone has hard storage built into it and this is where your newest photos and videos go. Once signed up, this local phone storage is automatically backed up on your devices default cloud storage, iCloud Photos in the case of iPhone users. But when you run out of space on this local storage, the remaining images are stored only on your cloud plan.

The catch is that you have to pay more as you use more space. For Apple’s iCloud Photos, you start out free for just 50 gigs, then $2.99 a month for 500 gigs, then $9.99 a month for 2 tb and it just goes up and up. Samsung Cloud and Google Photos are very similar.

Whichever device/default cloud photo storage you use, this archive of your cell phone images is happening automatically without additional apps installed. This makes things pretty seamless which is why most consumers probably stop here.

You should know that iPhones are not compatible with Samsung Cloud and Samsung Galaxies are not compatible with iCloud Photos. However, Google Photos can be used on every smart phone I checked.

But if you want to migrate your photos to reduce subscription costs, or back them up for safe keeping in the event of a catastrophe such as loss of access to your default cloud account, I have two more recommendations.

Flickr Pro (Unlimited Storage, $148 per 2 years)

Something that many people probably aren’t aware of is that your dusty old Flickr account can be used to back up your cell phone photos and video. And, if you have a Flickr Pro account, this includes unlimited photos and videos.

Honestly, if you only use a free Flickr account, the 1000 photo limit will probably not be very useful for the purposes of a smart phone back up. So I recommend a Pro account not only for your cell phone photos but also to back up all of your finalized film/digital artistic photos too. Flickr Pro is a cheaper image storage solution to something like Backblaze with the main limitation being less file format compatibility and a video length limit of 10 minutes. But the benefits are image hosting and of course use of the site’s non-Zuckerberg/Musk social media features.

I have my iPhone set up to sync with a private album on my Flickr Pro page. My followers can see my film photos but not my iPhone slop.

I like Flickr‘s legacy viewing, editing and retrieval interface which is very basic and easy to navigate. Flickr has lots of great batch tools that allow you to tag and organize and even add copyright information to images once they are uploaded And unlike Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, there is no AI interaction with your photos on Flickr. Oh, and you get 5% off from KEH.com with your Flickr Pro account!

Flickr is a legacy online image service though and it does have its downsides. The site can run slow at times. Some may find the interface out of date. Worse, there is no end-to-end data encryption or two factor authentication.

All that being said, I think Flickr offers useful and unique features for a competitive price.

Amazon Photos (Unlimited Storage, “Free” with Prime)

A much more widespread and current photo storage solution is Amazon Photos. Amazon Photos offers unlimited storage like Flickr but it comes at no additional charge with every Amazon Prime account. So if you’re there for the free shipping, you may as well be backing up your photos here too.

I have an Amazon Prime account that I used to turn on and off in order to get occasional deals on shipping products purchased from Amazon. But I’ve slowly, if not regrettably been sucked into the Amazon ecosystem of Prime streaming video and music. I just try to find all the little perks that I can use to justify my deal with the Devil. For example, a Prime membership even gets you $0.10 to $0.20 off gasoline.

I get it if you view Amazon as the real-world equivalent of Wall-E’s Buy-n-Large and you don’t want Jeff Bezos to have your photos. But if you can hold your nose and press the button, Amazon Photos does offer the security and privacy that Flickr does not and that Apple charges quite a bit for. With Amazon Photos, you can also turn off AI scans of your images.

Flickr and Amazon Photos exist as a phone app, a webpage and also a desktop app. While I haven’t explored them yet, these other iterations can be used to back up your film photo files directly from your computer too.

The only downside I’ve noticed to Amazon Photos is that total video space is allotted to just 5gb without a paid upgrade.

iCloud Photos, Samsung Cloud and Google Photos can be operated from phone and desktop apps as well as a webpage too. And they also offer the same high quality security and privacy. But the advantage I see to Amazon Photos is that is bundled with shopping and streaming.

Conclusion

For some of you, this might have been elementary, but personally, I only stumbled into some of these options fairly recently. I imagine others were unaware of this use for accounts they already had too. May as well put these serviced to their full use and keep our photos safe. I’d love to hear from anyone who uses these easier/more affordable forms of photo backup for their “real”, non-cell phone photos too. That will be my next step with Amazon Photos.

Drop any related tips you have in the comments!

Thanks for reading and happy archiving!

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Johnny Martyr 

Johnny is a B&H Photo and Amazon affiliate. Clicking, and ideally bookmarking, product links on this site earns a small commission to help him keep film photography alive at no additional cost to you.

Many times in life, I have either lost contact with people and things that have meant a great deal to me. Some have resurfaced, a few years later; others, have returned to my circle after a few decades and some are still out there somewhere. In every case, those losses have been because I have been needed by those closest to me. The old adage, “If you love something, let it go……”, keeps coming back on replay; and that’s okay. My life of travel and community service has been set aside for the benefit of a very bright, rambunctious and captivating little girl-and I would do this a thousand times over. There is no telling how much she is going to mean to the world, but I sense it will be a great deal.

Some of what I have given up will be brought back into my life, especially if it will benefit Hana. I look forward to all of that, and to much else that I can only imagine at this point. My sense of worth and of accomplishment are what have most strongly been recaptured.

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#8 & GOLDEN EGG END XOXO- LILY & AMI-CHAN

A prescribed burn (controlled burn) in a field near the intersection of SW 69th Street and SW Burlingame Road, south of Topeka.
Shawnee County, Kansas
Thursday evening 19 March 2026

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