You probably take a lot of pictures with your smartphone. Whether you have a great smartphone camera like the Galaxy S6 or a mediocre device, it's always ready for special photo opportunities.
Of course, this means you probably have a ton of photos. Too much to manage on your own unless you have a lot of free time and a lot of patience. Also read: 9 Android tips to edit your photos.
That's why you need a camera roll app that can do more than just display your images. Your phone may have come with an app called "Gallery" or something similar and you probably have Google's Photos app, but there's bound to be something better out there. There are several third-party apps that can help you narrow down your collection and organize your photos better so that you don't have to swipe endlessly when you want to show your friends a particular photo.
MyRoll surprises you with the best moments
If you want your photo gallery to do some of the heavy lifting and surprise you with the photos you like best, check out MyRoll.
The classic camera roll layout and a grid of previews of your images make it easy to navigate. But the difference from other apps is the way it groups photos in Moments. These are groups of photos that you took around the same time or in the same location.
This is great for vacation photos or when you've taken a ton of photos of a cute baby. The machine learning isn't perfect - I was notified of a cool new group of photos only to find out that it was a group of 10 screenshots.
However, MyRoll does have a solution to this problem in the form of a partner app: Gallery Doctor.
It analyzes your photos and recommends which "bad" images to discard, such as screenshots or low-quality photos. You can decide for yourself which photos to throw away, so that the program doesn't accidentally throw away your wedding photos. Sorting is actually very good. I take an extraordinary amount of screenshots, but it helps a lot to remove bad photos that you've overlooked.
A+ Gallery is best for Facebook addicts
If you use Facebook to share your photos, A+ Gallery is probably the best option. The app can connect to Facebook's photo backup service so that your photos are immediately ready to share, something you normally have to do within the social network's app.
A+ also has an interesting feature that allows you to search for photos by color. It's a bit odd and not something I'd use on a regular basis, but maybe others think differently.
Overall, it has a clean interface, making it a great alternative if your default gallery isn't as pretty, which unfortunately is sometimes the case with phone manufacturers.
Quickpic works great with backup services
Quickpic can display all your photos if you use a number of different cloud storage accounts. Google Drive/Photos, Dropbox, OneDrive, Amazon, Box and other services are all supported. You can also share a photo directly to another device via Wi-Fi, although I would recommend Bluetooth or Android Beam for this.
You can also view your images as a stack, grid, or list and sort them into folders. The interface has a lot of Material Design elements, such as the navigation bar and slide-out menu, so it's easy to use and looks great.
Piktures offers a clean, smart interface
Piktures: This is one of the best looking gallery apps out there. There are several sections that you can swipe through, dividing your photos into different main categories on different screens. You can then swipe to see your albums, photos grouped by location, or a calendar view that shows specific photos from different days.
You can spice things up a bit by selecting a certain image as a feature photo for a map. It looks nice and makes it easier to get an idea of what's in the folder.
Don't ignore Google's photo ambitions
While all of these apps are admirable implementations, it's worth keeping an eye on Google's evolving efforts in the field of photos. Most manufacturers don't set it as default, but Google+ Photos is on your device along with Google+. Google is going to unbundle it from its social network and is moving its main storage hub to Google Drive.
This means you can view your gallery in both apps; the main advantage of the standalone Photos is that it has Auto Awesome and automatic adjustments to images. It also has lighting adjustment capabilities, many of which are taken from Snapseed, which was acquired by Google.
Photos are important on smartphones - remember the emphasis Samsung has placed on the camera with its Galaxy S6 and LG with the G4. This means that the applications that manage your photos have to get better and better to keep their place on your phone.
