Samsung announced today that it plans to terminate some of its Samsung Cloud services. The services Gallery Sync, Drive, and Premium storage subscriptions will be deprecated over the course of the coming year.

The features are not gone completely, however, as Microsoft"s OneDrive service will be used instead. Samsung is offering customers migration options to get their data from Gallery Sync and Drive to Microsoft"s OneDrive service. Alternatively, it is possible to download the date to mobile devices or desktop computer systems.

The company has divided customers into two groups based on the region of first sign-up to the service. Samsung uses different dates for the shut down of its services; you can check out the list of countries / regions associated with groups here.

• October 5, 2020 (Group 1) or December 1, 2020 (Group 2)
  • These features cannot be used for new customers.
  • OneDrive migration and data download is available.
  • Rollout takes 30 days.
• April 1, 2021 (Group 1) or June 1, 2021 (Group 2)
  • Use of Gallery Sync and Drive ends.
  • End of OneDrive migration.
  • Premium storage subscriptions that still exist are canceled, and last payments are refunded.
• June 30, 2021 (Group 1) or August 31, 2021 (Group 2)
  • Data downloads are no longer available.

Samsung customers who download the data before the official end date will no longer be able to use the services. Similarly, once migrated, Samsung"s own services become unavailable to these customers.

Customers who have used Samsung Cloud Gallery Sync or Drive, have two main options int he given time frame:

The first option becomes available on October 5, 2020 for the first group and on December 1, 2020 for the second group. Samsung notes that customers may integrate OneDrive without using the automatic data transfer option, but that this option becomes available from Juen 30, 2021 (Group 1) or August 31, 2021 (Group 2) on only.

If OneDrive is not supported in a particular region, only data download is offered to customers.

A FAQ on this page provides additional information. The most important are:

• Customers who select to migrate the data cannot download it to their local devices as well; this can be done after the migration completes using OneDrive.
• Samsung Cloud paid storage customers get "free extra OneDrive storage capacity" for one year. After that period, it is necesssary to purchase extra OneDrive storage.
• Gallery Sync service with OneDrive will work with multiple devices just like before.
• Only Gallery Sync, Drive and premium storage are terminated.

Samsung provides no information on why it is shutting down its own services in favor of OneDrive. Customers face several challenges when it comes to the decision and migration:

• The terms of service may be different. Microsoft is very strict when it comes to nudity on Onedrive, even if the media is owned by the customer. Account terminations may happen if nudity is discovered.
• Storage locations may be switched to different regions.
• A Microsoft Account is required to use OneDrive.

Now You: Are you a Samsung customer? What is your take on the news?

Summary

Article Name

Samsung ends Gallery Sync, Drive, and Premium storage subscriptions, offers OneDrive migration

Description

Samsung announced today that it plans to terminate some of its Samsung Cloud services. The services Gallery Sync, Drive, and Premium storage subscriptions will be deprecated over the course of the coming year.

Author

Martin Brinkmann

Publisher

Ghacks Technology News

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