storage

Nextbit’s Robin is a new smartphone that’s primary goal is to eliminate the lack of smartphone storage. Robin uses the cloud and intelligently archives stuff you don’t use or need often, while backing it up to the cloud. Recently, we took a trip to Nextbit HQ for a closer look at Robin and to see what it’s all about…

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Update: Google says that the issue has now been fixed and limits have been reapplied.

The new Google Photos service saw its launch last month at Google I/O 2015, and its announcement came with much fanfare thanks to its “unlimited” storage option—which lets you store as many photos and videos as you want for free as long as you’re willing to sacrifice some amount of quality. Now, it looks like some users who have tried to take advantage of this offer are actually hitting an invisible limit…
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Dropbox fans, you’re in luck – version 3.0.0 is completely redesigned to follow Google’s Material Design guidelines.

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The capacity of flash storage devices just keeps climbing at an exponential rate, and now we’re hearing (via CNET) that California-based Microdia plans to introduce a 512 GB—yes, five hundred twelve gigabyte—microSD card later this summer. 
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As part of its CES announcements kicking off today, SanDisk revealed its new, faster Ultra Dual USB Drive 3.0 with micro-USB for use with Android devices as well as PC and Mac computers.
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Microsoft on Monday announced that it will be eliminating its top-tier cloud storage plan and offering unlimited cloud storage to Office 365 subscribers at no additional cost. The change will begin rolling out today for Office 365 Home, Personal and University customers and will continue over the coming months.
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Google announced today on its blog that it’s lowering the monthly pricing plans it offers for users buying extra storage on Google Drive. Google attributes the changes to “recent infrastructure improvements” that is allowing it to offer more affordable storage options. Google reminds us that, as always, Drive storage purchased through the new plans counts towards storage for Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos.

The new plans begin at just $1.99 for 100GB down from the previous $4.99 for the same amount of storage. There is also a new $10 plan for 1TB (down from $50 previously), and a 10TB and up option that starts at $99.99. Google will also continue offering the free 15GB option that comes with your Google account for Drive, Gmail and Google+.

How big is a terabyte anyway? Well, that’s enough storage for you to take a selfie twice a day for the next 200 years and still have room left over for… shall we say… less important things. Like before, storage continues to work across Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos. And, of course, the 15GB plan remains free.

The new pricing plans for Google Drive are available now through www.google.com/settings/storage. Users that are already signed up for a monthly plan will be automatically switched to the new, better plans. 
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The guys and gals over at iFixit are once again tearing down our favorite electronic devices, this time the new Nook Tablet from Barnes & Noble. The end result is a repairability score of 6 out of 10 and a few interesting findings, especially in comparison to the Kindle Fire. Today we also get our first root for the device, allowing the Android Market to run with some minor limitations. Liliputing (via SlashGear) has compiled a complete guide using tips from various posters on Xda-developers.

A few noteworthy findings that you may have previously be unaware of include:

Storage– While Barnes & Noble advertises 16GB of onboard internal storage (saying the 6GB included in Amazon’s Kindle Fire makes it “deficient for a media tablet”), the truth is only 1GB is available for content other than B&N content. iFixit says only 12GB of the 16GB is actually available to the user, while only 1GB of that 12 is available for content other than that downloaded from the B&N app store. Looks like the majority of your content (other than content purchased from B&N) will have to be stored mostly on microSD.

We also get a nice comparison of the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire. iFixit explains:

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If you believe the rumors, Google’s been working on a cloud-based drive for your computer since 2005. Code-named “Platypus” and also known as GDrive, it was supposed to arrive long ago, as I wrote over at TG Daily in January 2009. Today’s article by TechCrunch asserts that the search company may be close to launching Gdrive, based on code hooks discovered in Chrome that point to the drive.google.com URL:

Diving a bit deeper into the code reviews, what’s most striking is that drive.google.com doesn’t appear to be referenced anywhere besides this one exposed ticket. This suggests that it’s either no big deal, or that Google is keeping this very secret.

TechCrunch also reminds us of Steven Levy’s book “In The Plex” which describes how Google+ lead Bradley Horowitz “convinced Google’s top executives not to launch” Gdrive back in 2008 because he felt “the concept of a ‘file’ was outdated”.

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Google has always integrated products, into products, into products. Google+ is no different, where we see many of Google’s product incorporated into this invite only product. One of these is Picasa, who historically only had a storage limit of 1GB, but now that Google+ is on the market things have changed. ReadWriteWeb has posted a break down on what pictures count torwards what storage.

As it turns out, there’s nothing to worry about. If you’re signed up for Google+, photos up to 2048×2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes long won’t count towards this free storage limit. And Google will automatically resize photos for you when you upload them to Google+, so they stay under the free size limit.

That means only photos uploaded directly to Picasa Web Albums over the 2048×2048 size will count towards the 1 GB of free storage, explains Google. And when that limit is reached, photos will be automatically resized.

Meanwhile, for non-Google+ users, there are slightly stricter rules: photos up to 800×800 and videos up to 15 minutes won’t count towards free storage. Again, when the 1 GB limit is reached, larger photos will be resized down.

To sum this up, any Google user can now upload unlimited pictures to Picasa as long as they’re under 2048×2048. If they’re above 2048×2048 you are given 1GB of storage, but they’ll be resized. Google+ users can upload photos up to 2048×2048 that won’t count towards the limit, and Google will automatically resize them to stay within the limits. Get storing!

Related articles

• Free storage limits – Picasa for Google+ users (picasa.google.com)
• Google Takeout lets you pull your data out of the cloud (9to5google.com)