icloud??

om wrote:
As camperforlife noted-use it when hooked up to wifi. If you are on a limited data plan, pics can use quite a bit of data. At least that is what I think caused our jump in data usage...

Yes - you need to be careful with your "cloud" settings if you're relying on your data plan. The default on my droid as well as my daughter's iPhone were to back pictures (and other stuff) to the cloud. That means every pic you take is transmitted using your data plan to remote storage.

My opinion is that storage technology has gotten good enough that you should never exhaust the storage on your phone and/or the memory card you install. If it makes you feel better, schedule regular backups to the cloud and only when you're connected to WiFi. Otherwise, my opinion is that cloud storage is risky in ways that you wouldn't think of right away. How about targeted ads based on the content in your cloud storage? Or deriving location information from pictures you've stored? Facial recognition, too.

Read the fine print when you check that iCloud or Google Drive box. What are you giving up in exchange for that "free" storage?

I like iCloud's feature of synchronizing contacts between iPhone and iPad. It does not sync Notes for me, which is just as well - I want to have different notes on the two devices. I do not turn on iCloud for photos because I don't want to waste space for duplicate photos - I use the cord to plug each device into my computer's USB port and drag them to the big hard drive for backup. I don't use the cloud drive feature because i think it does too much copying but the family sharing feature looks interesting to me.

iCloud is simply Apple's form of online (Cloud) storage. Dropbox, Google Drive and others are other examples. Photobucket is another form of cloud storage.

The iCloud is a good way to go for iPhones and other Apple products because it's automated for Apple devices. I think you get something like 5gb free.

Thanks folks. I take away from this that it is storage from off site location. I guess I would never know how to retrieve it if I needed it, but that is OK. My question is answered

Horsedoc wrote:
Thanks folks. I take away from this that it is storage from off site location. I guess I would never know how to retrieve it if I needed it, but that is OK. My question is answered

Backing up your iPhone to the cloud is a very good idea btw, it saves all your contacts, photos, music, apps, etc.