Ease of Downloading Photos from Cloud to Local Storage - Google vs iCloud vs Others

My company allows me to use my company issued phone as my primary device, but the device itself is always owned by the company. 

Whenever I'm lucky enough to get a free device upgrade, the company wants the device wiped. They don't support any type of backup migration. You give them an 7 year old clean device, they give you back a new $1000 clean device. 

As a result, I've gotta offload all my data to the cloud. 

Thing is, I kinda hate getting my data OFF the cloud. 

Google makes you do the whole "Google Takeout" which I'm not a fan of. However, I'd get more gmail and drive storage.

Apple will give you nicely organized photo albums, but in HEIC format (native to Apple OS). I don't use iCloud or Apple mail for anything other than backups. 

Microsoft has OneDrive which apparently has some of the easiest "save to local storage" options. At least for most of us who use Windows. 

Any reason to use one vs another?

So, with apple ... when I buy a new iphone I reset the phone and return it, but all the info stay in the cloud under my apple username. I assume Google is the same. 

Are you saying they delete your username every time you get a new phone?

Are you allowed to install personal apps?  I have a little SanDisk storage doodad that has a lightning port and a USB port, and they have an app that allows you to copy files from your iPhone.

I use an app called 'AndFTP' which implements a number of file transfer protocols on my phone (Pixel 6 Pro -- no idea if it exists for iPhone or not).  I then use scp to copy the files (mainly photos) to my Linux server over wifi.

eastsideTim said:

Are you allowed to install personal apps?  I have a little SanDisk storage doodad that has a lightning port and a USB port, and they have an app that allows you to copy files from your iPhone.

SanDisk 256GB iXpand Flash Drive Go $58

What's the advantage of using this vs just doing a normal backup via iTunes? 

In reply to pheller :

Good question, I am not sure if there is.  I haven't used iTunes for backup for a very long time.

In reply to pheller :

Why are you using iTunes to back up the phone? You need to use iCloud. 

This has all been simplified for me since I got a NAS.  It's basically a hard drive in a box in your house that hooked to your network.  It's a wee server that is your own cloud.  Mine is 8gb and houses all of my ripped DVDs, auto-backup photos, and a rolling CCTV for my Wyze cameras on the front and back porches.

I have google photos that go back to 2008.  I'm constantly bothered by notifications that my Google storage is full.  I tried to do the download thing several times and it doesn't work.  You select files to download and it is supposed to give you a link to a zip file.  I got that link, but the zip files are gibberish file names that don't work.  One of these days I'm going to have to select blocks of photos and download individually which will take weeks.  Once I find a way to get all those photos on my NAS, I'll delete all my google photos to free up space.

I regularly plug my Pixel into my computer, select file transfer as the USB usage, and copy + paste all my pictures from the DCIM folder to whatever hard drive I feel like. No aps, no paying for anything, just downloading the full original image to wherever I want.

Slippery said:

In reply to pheller :

Why are you using iTunes to back up the phone? You need to use iCloud. 

I'm not really creating a backup, per say. I'm transferring all files (personal data) off the phone. 

Because I won't be able to restore the new phone from a backup. I'll only be able to reconnect my icloud account. 

As a result, I'll need to either buy storage in iCloud, or some other places to store the files. 

Remember when you could just plug an sd card into your phone and keep everything there?

Like my current phone, and all but one phone I've owned since the invention of full sized SD cards.

I definitely appreciate how the Apple eco-system "just works" with other devices within that system, but Apple has always sacrificed that occasional ease of use for everything else working smoothy. 

I'm generally happy with my very old Apple devices, except for when I just want all the data off them.