Amazon Prime customers get unlimited online photo storage

Amazon has extended its Cloud Drive unlimited online photo storage to all Amazon Prime subscribers – whether they own a Kindle Fire tablet or Fire Phone, or not.

From today onwards, all Prime subscribers can upload an unrestricted number of photos to Amazon’s servers, in both JPEG and larger RAW formats, from any type of device – not just Amazon’s own range of phones and tablets. Using the Amazon Cloud Drive app for Android and iOS, users can set all images to upload automatically too, saving them the need to add them manually. You can also upload from a Windows or Mac computer, and add video clips too – as long as they are less than 2GB in size and under 20 minutes in length.

“This time of year in particular, families are capturing thousands of photos of holiday parties, family gatherings and opening presents,” Greg Greeley, VP of Amazon Prime, said of the announcement. “Prime has always allowed members to conveniently save time and save money, and now with Prime Photos they can save memories, too.”

The new unlimited service is a big step up from the original 5GB free limit for Cloud Drive photo uploads, and puts Amazon’s service a step ahead of Dropbox – which currently only provides 2GB of storage for non-paying customers. It also puts Amazon on par with Microsoft, which has just flipped the switch on unlimited free OneDrive web storage for Office 365 subscribers.

This latest addition to Amazon Prime makes it look like even better value: many customers complained when the Instant Video streaming service was rolled into the Prime subscription, but with next-day delivery on the majority of purchases made through Amazon’s website, access to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, unlimited, ad-free streaming of over a million songs through Amazon Prime Music