Earlier this week, Google had launched its AI-powered Gallery Go app on the Play Store. The app was launched in Nigeria at an event organized by Google. Is the new Android Gallery Go app better than Google Photos? What new features does it provide? Let’s find it out!
Google Gallery Go review
Interface
The Gallery Go app’s interface is divided into two sections – Files and Folder. The Files interface displays the pictures and videos the app has found on your mobile device in a grid interface. The media files are grouped by the month they were taken/recorded or added to the phone’s gallery.
The Folder view displays the list of folders where the app has found media files on your Android device. The folders are displayed in round-cornered square boxes. Instead of a folder icon, Gallery Go sets the first picture in the folder as the square’s background image. Below this image, Gallery Go shows the size of the folder. The application doesn’t let users cut, copy, paste, rename, or share the folders. It only allows users to create a new folder.
Supported operations
If you tap the thumbnail once, the app will fit the image to the phone’s screen. It will also display an option to share, edit, delete and enhance the picture. If you tap the image twice, Gallery Go will zoom the image.
Gallery Go provides the following photo editing tools:
Filters and auto-enhance: Gallery Go offers 14 filters. It can automatically detect and correct the color, brightness, and contrast of objects in the images. This feature is called “Auto Enhancer”. Gallery Go won’t replace the original image with its enhanced version automatically. It will provide an option to either save the “enhanced” copy of the original image or replace the original image with its “enhanced” copy.
Crop: Want to get rid of unwanted objects in the picture? Use the Crop tool.
Rotate: If you’ve taken a photo from a 90, 180, or 270-degree angle, use this utility to correct it. GG rotates the picture by 90 degrees.
Artificial Intelligence in action
Google Gallery Go scans media files saved on the phone’s internal/external storage memory and groups them by type. For example, if the application finds an animal in a picture, it will display this image under the category “Animal”. If the image contains only trees, the app will show this picture in the category “Nature”.
Features of the Google Photos app that you won’t find in Gallery Go
Trash: When you delete an image in Google Photos, the app will move the picture to ” Trash ” folder. Media files you delete in the Gallery Go app are removed forever.
Menu: Gallery Go’s menu has only two options – settings and help. The settings interface provides an option to disable the automatic grouping of faces.
Syncing: GP can sync your images to Gdrive when you log into the app with your Google account. Gallery Go doesn’t support the file-syncing feature.
Screenshots
Pros
Bug-free: Although my phone has good hardware i.e. Snapdragon 636, 3GB RAM, Adreno 512 GPU, Google Photos crashed several times when I tried moving large videos from the phone’s internal storage memory to the MicroSD card. Gallery Go didn’t crash when I moved the same files.
No effect on battery: I used the app for up to an hour. I was surprised that the phone’s battery didn’t drain.
Fast: Gallery Go’s interface is significantly faster than Google Photos. The app’s UI is smooth, and it loads thumbnails of pictures quickly.
Offline: Google GG works like a charm in offline mode.
Batch operations: The new app from Google can copy or move several files at a time.
Lightweight: The app’s size is about 11 megabytes.
Cons
- No search option
- You can’t change the default view from Files to Folders in Google Gallery.
Also read: Best photo editing apps
