We have thousands of photos stored on our phones and need fast and efficient apps like Samsung Gallery or Google Photos to scroll through them. Galaxy users are spoiled for choice because they can use both as their default Gallery apps. They provide a fast and user-friendly interface to view your images and videos and have unique features and certain pros and cons that differentiate them.
But, which one is better and offers the smoothest experience? I tested both Gallery apps to compare their features and find their strengths and weaknesses. By the end of this article comparing Samsung Gallery and Google Photos, I hope you’ll be able to decide which is best for you.
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Free gallery apps for viewing photos and videos
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Samsung Gallery is baked into Galaxy phones and provides a fast and stable platform for viewing images and videos. It’s ideal for sorting content into folders and albums and includes handy tools for editing pictures. The app doesn’t require an account and works offline, storing all your images and videos on your phone instead of in the cloud.
Google Photos is also free and works on all Android devices as a Gallery app and cloud storage solution. It lets users view and edit images and videos on their phones and other devices connected to the same Google account. You can also easily access them on your PC if you want to use editing software like PhotoShop.
This means you’ll never lose the backed-up images with Google Photos if your phone gets stolen.
User interfaces
Both work very well despite different philosophies
Samsung Gallery displays your content chronologically, with the most recent pictures and videos at the top when you open the app. All the content from the camera and messaging apps is stored on the same page, making it easy to find what you’re looking for by scrolling.
This app follows Samsung’s One UI design philosophy and has a user-friendly design with all the buttons and tabs easily accessible. The content gallery takes up the bottom half of the screen, with the sync, search, and editing icons placed on the right side above it.
The folder options are at the bottom, and you can select Pictures, Albums, or Stories to find what you’re looking for. Accessing advanced searches and other functions is easy with the settings on the bottom left, which provides access to Videos, Favorites, Recents, and more. It also provides a shortcut to the Samsung Studio app for adding soundtracks, transitions, and stickers to your photos and videos.
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What I like the most about the Samsung Gallery interface is that I can swipe my finger across it to enlarge or reduce the size of the thumbnails. This feature makes it easy to preview each picture and scroll by date to find older content.
Google Photos also displays your content chronologically. However, it only displays screenshots, images, and videos taken by your camera and won’t list received content from third-party apps like WhatsApp by default.
You’ll need to manually enable the Backup & Sync option to back up the WhatsApp images from your phone to Google Photos.
The Google Photos interface covers the whole display. In the top right corner is the Create new menu, with the update and Google account settings beside it. Underneath are fun memory folders containing image galleries of special days from years ago. They bring a fun vibe to the app and put a smile on my face when I relive precious moments from my past.
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Like Samsung Gallery, the images and photos take up the bottom half of the screen. You can’t swipe to change the thumbnail size, but you can personalize the layout using the Comfortable, Day, or Month layouts. The bottom of the display has large icons for browsing photos, memories, and collections. It includes a handy search function to find screenshots, favorites, and other recently added content.
Backup and syncing
Keep your content safe in the cloud
Samsung Gallery stores your content locally on the phone by default and offers advanced backup options to sync it with the cloud. The app syncs with OneDrive to upload your content and requires a Microsoft account, which can be an advantage or disadvantage, depending on how you view it. It’s no problem if you already have an Office 365 subscription with a built-in cloud storage subscription and want to access your photos on a Windows-based laptop. On the other hand, it can be a disadvantage if you’re already hooked up to the Google ecosystem and don’t want to waste money on an unnecessary subscription.
Once you’ve chosen to back up to OneDrive, you can choose which albums to sync and whether to use mobile data or Wi-Fi only to do it. Samsung Gallery allows users to delete the data from their phone’s memory to free up space after backing it up to OneDrive. They can access their content online via OneDrive or on any other devices with it installed.
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Google Photos’ biggest advantage is its built-in backup and syncing system. It seamlessly integrates with any Android device and doesn’t require a new subscription. However, Google Photos only includes 15GB of storage space shared between Gmail and other apps, so you’ll probably need to change your membership plan if you have a massive gallery.
Google Photos’ biggest advantage is its built-in backup and syncing system.
It’s easy to back up your data with Google Photos, and you can access it via Google Drive on Android and non-Android devices like Windows laptops. Like with Samsung Gallery, you can clean up your phone’s memory and access all your photos via the cloud.
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Editing features
Tools to improve your image quality
Samsung Gallery offers extensive editing tools to change your images’ size, lighting, and more. Some handy features include sliders to adjust the lighting, brightness, and exposure, as well as drawing tools for adding diagrams, stickers, and text. Preset styles like Watercolor and Marker add fun color effects, and the app includes easy resizing and cropping tools. You can even add watermarks to pictures or use the latest AI Object Eraser tool to add or remove elements.
The editing features in Google Photos do the job but aren’t comparable to those of Samsung Gallery.
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In short, Samsung Gallery offers impressive convenience, because I can edit the photos I take on my phone without copying them onto other devices. The tools are user-friendly and can rival basic photo-editing apps like Pixlr in terms of features.
Google Photos includes various image editing tools, like AI Enhance and Magic Eraser, as well as Unblur and Dynamic functions. It lets you adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, and other color settings. You also get a cropping tool and some preset filters for minor tweaks to the image.
The editing features in Google Photos do the job but aren’t comparable to those of Samsung Gallery. It cannot add stickers and watermarks, has fewer effects, and doesn’t offer drawing or font tools.
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AI features
Samsung Gallery includes the Bixby Vision AI tool. It can translate text into different languages, find more information about items in a picture, and integrate with Samsung’s augmented apps to create fun images.
Google Photos uses Google Lens to fulfill the same role as Bixby Vision. It can identify landmarks, products, and other objects in photos and translate text.
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Both AI tools do the job and offer similar functionality, but Google Lens has a slight Edge because it leverages Google Search to identify objects accurately.
Samsung Gallery or Google Photos: Which image gallery app is best for you?
It depends on what you’re looking for
Samsung Gallery is limited to Galaxy phones, so users with other Android devices will be better off with Google Photos by default. However, it does have some advantages and is a better option for users looking for an impressive array of editing tools to tweak their images and videos. The app doesn’t require a user account, but you’ll still need one from Microsoft if you plan on backing up to OneDrive.
Finding what you’re looking for is easy in Samsung Gallery because you can swipe to increase or decrease the thumbnail size. It also matches your Galaxy phone’s aesthetic, and you can customize its appearance with various themes. Personally, my overall pick is Samsung Galaxy because of its editing tools.
Google Photos is a cloud-based gallery app that lets you access your photos from most devices. It offers fantastic simplicity and peace of mind despite requiring a Google account, because you know that your videos and images are always safe and accessible from anywhere.
The app won’t support your custom themes but makes up for it with a minimalist design and fun memory albums to relive precious moments.
Samsung Gallery and Google Photos are excellent apps, and the best option depends on your preferences. Samsung Gallery offers better editing tools, and Google Photos has superior syncing functions. Galaxy users are fortunate enough to have both and can switch between them based on the features they need at any given time.
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