Survey shows Samsung Gallery's former backup buddy was more popular than you might think

At the end of September, Samsung halted Gallery sync support for Microsoft OneDrive. Previously, this partnership allowed photos from Gallery to be seamlessly mirrored to OneDrive, much like the Google Photos app backs up to Google’s cloud service. Many believed Samsung was gearing up for its own cloud backup service in a similar vein, but that wasn’t the case. Before pulling the plug on OneDrive, it was revealed that Samsung was switching from the Microsoft platform to, ironically, Google Cloud. Now, when sync is enabled, Gallery users can back up their images to Google’s service while still accessing them in Gallery.

Given the online chatter surrounding this move, we were interested in understanding just how many Samsung users took advantage of this OneDrive sync smarts. Was it even popular? We ran a poll, and the results are below.

More than 2,500 votes were cast in this survey, and the result is balanced on a knife-edge. The slim majority of 51.9% of respondents did not use Gallery’s OneDrive integration, which largely supports Samsung’s decision to switch to an alternative provider. However, that does mean a surprisingly chunky 48.1% of respondents did use the OneDrive sync smarts. For these users, any backed-up photos will remain on OneDrive, but future images can only be uploaded to Google Photos.

Judging by the comments, many of our readers weren’t happy with Samsung’s decision. Reader andi writes:

Can’t believe it, I thought they were working on some internal solution, which I would have been very happy about. Instead we get freaking Google Drive?? You gotta be joking. Now I should give my private pictures to the biggest Data mining giant in existance? This has to be a joke.

Others certainly don’t mind. Per commenter Rusty Harris:

Heck, I cut ties with OneDrive on everything, the minute I connect something! I’m old fashioned and still BACKUP everything.

Personally, as a Samsung user, I can’t quite justify using Samsung Gallery if I’m already using Google Photos as a viewer and backup tool. Samsung’s default photo viewer loses some utility with this new Google partnership. Nevertheless, those who appreciate Samsung’s unique gallery features and still want that Google Photos backup integration will likely sleep much better at night.

What do you think about Samsung Gallery’s Google Photos backup integration? Do you even use Gallery? Let’s discuss in the comments below.