A cell phone photo tip

I see a lot of posts talking about the trouble sometimes involved in using your cell phone for your shop and receipt photos.

My tip to reduce the hassle - sign up for a Google Plus account and make use of Google Photos.

There is an automatic "back up" feature where your photos will be immediately copied to your Google Photo page. No more using up phone memory (my phone doesn't automatically save them to my SD card) and no having to cable or bluetooth to download to your computer (bluetooth NEVER works for me for some reason).

When you get home open your Photos file in a browser window and right click to save them to your computer.

They will stay on your Google Photos file until you delete them and there is a lot of storage provided for free.

Create an Account or Log In

Membership is free. Simply choose your username, type in your email address, and choose a password. You immediately get full access to the forum.

More About Phone Shops

If your doing lots of audits and snapping many photo's, you can chew up your data plan.

I use a small phone for mystery shopping that is more discrete than a Galaxy S6 (I have a little Galaxy Light) and only have a prepay sim card with no monthly fee and per minute plan and no data at all. This phone cost me $25 a year to reload the minimum minutes and is a backup phone.

I put a 32 GB MicroSD card in the phone and have camera, voice recorder and video camera apps all set to record to the card.

The fastest way to transfer files from a phone to your home PC is not with Bluetooth or USB. The fastest way is to send them over your home WIFI with FTP. (File Transfer Protocol)

The best file manager for Android has an FTP server built in(ES File Explorer): [www.estrongs.com]

After you run the FTP server on the phone, you simply punch in the IP address on the phone screen showing the FTP is running into your FTP client.

Here is a simple FTP client addon for Firefox: [addons.mozilla.org]

Nothing is faster than this transfer method and your not sharing your files with a third party.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2015 10:57AM by scanman1.

You can also use any android or apple phone as a wifi device without having any service on it. I have a Motorola Moto G that I bought for $25 on sale that is my voice recorder mainly but also used as a camera sometimes and my Shop It device. No worries about hiding a voice recorder that looks like a phone. The Moto G is actually a nice phone and usually cost a lot more. The recording quality is very nice, nicer than most of the other phones in this price range. I still think it would be worth the $50-60 regular price

i just email my photos to myself

I use Dropbox. The photos automatically go into my Dropbox when I take them and they're already on my home computer when I get home.

I just put my SD card into my pc, by far faster the FTP.

A Dad shopping the Ark-LA-Tex and beyond.

If your laptop of desktop has a slot for an SD card, you will find that it is MUCH faster than a USB memory stick. I often use SD cards for storage for that reason. I haven't compared the transfer speed when using USB 3, however. Maybe someone will comment on that.

Shopping Southeast Pennsylvania, Delaware above the canal, and South Jersey since 2008

@ShoppingDad wrote:

I just put my SD card into my pc, by far faster the FTP.

This is true. My smartphone requires you to remove the back cover and take the battery out to remove the fragile MicroSD card and then put that into an SD adapter and then put that in the laptop and reverse the process without dropping the little card or wearing out the fragile socket and power cycling the phone.

For me, it's faster to use FTP. If you have a point and shoot camera with a full size SD card slot that is easy to access, then your doing it the best way.

I have a camera with a full size CD card, and trasferring directly from the card using an adapter is lightning fast -- much faster than WiFi or even the camera's own transfer cable. But I wouldn't want to do it using my phone's SD card for the reasons cited above.

I have an (older) unlimited data plan from Virgin Mobile so no worries on the backing up. If I was concerned about data usage though I would just have data turned off until I got home and used the WiFi to let it update. Sounds like Drop Box is the same setup with an auto upload feature.

I am not sure why you are worried about data usage if you have an unlimited data plan. Maybe I don't understand your comment or concern.

@Boutique wrote:

I have an (older) unlimited data plan from Virgin Mobile so no worries on the backing up. If I was concerned about data usage though I would just have data turned off until I got home and used the WiFi to let it update. Sounds like Drop Box is the same setup with an auto upload feature.

Shopping Southeast Pennsylvania, Delaware above the canal, and South Jersey since 2008

I also use drop box. It is so easy. I move the pictures from drop box to file folders after I do the report and they are also removed from drop box on my phone. Before that I was emailing them to myself. Drop box was definitely a lifesaver for me. I do lots of inspections and take lots of pictures.

I need to change my setting. I move them to drop box individually and they stay on the phone and now my phone is out of storage. Guess I need to figure out how to change that.

Of course, my cloud will probably out of storage if I do that. Which might be why I set it up the way I did.

Time to build a bigger bridge.

Cheap smartphone with 2MP camera: Target has a Tracfoe smartphone in this week's circular for $20.00 !!!

Great as a back up/ spare phone and surprisingly, WiFi and Gmail are both functional without even activating any phone service!!! BUT...apps generally don't work well on these cheap priced smartphones and Bluetooth for pic transfer to laptop never works either..

I use Dropbox too. I don't have an SD card for it at the moment, but I don't have too much problem with space. More often it is a battery problem.
My photos start uploading as soon as I connect to wifi (usually at home) and I file most reports on my laptop after my daughter goes to bed.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2015 07:57PM by Kakita987.

myst4au - I am not worried about data usage, I was replying to an earlier comment. If I were concerned (ie: did not have the plan that I have) I would do as I suggested and let it update when using WiFi.

I like to email the photos to myself because my iphone gives me the option to choose their size. With the other solutions mentioned here such as Dropbox and Google Photos, do you have to go through another step to resize your photos before using them?

Using my phone, I have not had to resize yet. I use a scanner app for documents though, and I think that helps.

Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.

Click here to login

A cell phone photo tip

Create an Account or Log In

Official List of Mystery Shopping Companies

Mystery Shopper Magazine