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"In smartphones, there are features, and there's flash. The Amazon Fire phone has its share of both: The quasi-3D display is pretty compelling, but the jury is still out on how much of a novelty it is.\nAn undoubtedly important Fire phone feature for everyday users, however, is the fact that you get unlimited cloud storage for all the photos you take with it.\nOffering free, unlimited photo storage for every photo you take on a smartphone is unprecedented. Although many apps offer automatic photo (and sometimes video) uploads, there's usually either a storage limit (go over it and you start paying) or some other caveat (such as a maximum resolution). \nAt 1 terabyte (1,000GB) of free storage, Flickr comes pretty close to unlimited for most practical purposes. But it doesn't come preloaded on any phones \u2014 you need to download the app and register.\nSee also: 25 Most-Followed Users on Instagram [PICS]\nAmazon is the first smartphone vendor to offer free, out-of-the-box cloud storage for every single photo you ever take with the phone. It's a very consumer-friendly move \u2014 and while Amazon's competitors have been inching in that direction, no one else has taken the plunge.\nPicture this slippery slope\nThe reason is simple: It would be very easy to abuse such a feature. Cloud backup for smartphone photos is meant to back up photos actually taken with the phone. But the camera roll on a smartphone also needs to be accessible by other apps (indeed, Apple recently announced it would make the iPhone's camera roll even more connectable than it already is in iOS 8 to satisfy developer desires).\nMany of those apps are essentially bridges between the phone and a wireless-enabled camera. That way, you can take high-quality photos with, say, a DSLR, and relay them (either via the camera's own Wi-Fi or an Eye-Fi card) to your device so you can then share them on services such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and all other digital communities where people share photos.\nYou can see where this is going. A photo service that grants unlimited free storage (as Amazon's purportedly does) opens the door to gaming the system \u2014 it's a relatively simple exercise to ensure every photo you take from any camera is uploaded to the service. \nThis is a photo archivist's dream: all photos \u2014 whether RAW, JPEG or anything else \u2014 all stored in the cloud, forever, at no charge.\nEven Flickr charges for such a service (you needed to have the now locked-down Flickr Pro to go truly unlimited). Amazon doesn't. The company's FAQ on the subject doesn't reveal any fine-print caveats, and when we asked Amazon directly, a company rep said there are no resolution or size restrictions, or any artificial storage limits. \nWhile Amazon will monitor for potential abuse, it expects the majority of Fire phone owners will fall within a \"normal range of usage.\"\nIs so-called abuse even something to fear, though? The multiple-camera scenario is certainly bending the rules, but given how few people would actually partake in it and the relative cheapness of cloud storage, Amazon can probably afford to absorb the outliers who will take advantage of its free service. \nAnd given the lack of other tools, Amazon's photo cloud probably won't challenge Flickr for the attentions of professional photographers.\nWho's next?\nNow that Amazon has dived into free photo storage, will its competitors step up? \nApple has already outlined its plans for iCloud Photo Library \u2014 and although its rates are cheap, they're not free. Google already backs up all your photos to Google+ for free, but not at full resolution. The company will have an opportunity to respond at Google I/O next week.\nMicrosoft may be the company best positioned to match Amazon's offer. Windows Phone still has relatively low market share compared with iOS and Android, and the company has a strong cloud platform in Azure and OneDrive. \nGiven the fact that the draw of many Windows Phones is the camera, Microsoft could earn a lot of customer loyalty by guaranteeing that all photos are automatically backed up, for free.\nOne thing's for sure: It will take a while before video follows photos into unlimited-storage territory. There's almost no upper limit to how much space a video can take up. Guaranteeing that every video gets stored \u2014 no matter how long or how high-res \u2014 is going to take generational jumps in storage and connection speeds.\nBut for now, Amazon's offering has no equivalent, and it solves a big pain point for consumers. Who hasn't needed to delete a bunch of old photos to clear out space on their phone? Amazon has pointed the way to a photo-friendly future, and it would be surprising if the rest of the tech world doesn't follow sooner or later.\n\nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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