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There's always a sense of concern when a popular app is sold off to a new owner. Sometimes everything goes well, but it's not uncommon for new ownership to lead to more aggressive advertising or other problems. QuickPic was a popular photo gallery app years ago, and it has returned to the Play Store — in worse shape than ever.
For many years, QuickPic was the darling photo gallery app of many. It was small, fast, efficient, and free — a rare combination of features. Then in 2015, QuickPic was bought by Cheetah Mobile and, despite many assurances that the app wouldn't be monetized with ads, those of us who had followed Cheetah over the years could guess that something was up. Now, following a huge Cheetah debacle last month, QuickPic has disappeared from the Play Store. If this isn't indication enough that things are iffy, I don't know what is.
The saga of once-beloved gallery app QuickPic continues as Cheetah Mobile asserts its control over the app. QuickPic is getting its first major update since the acquisition, and it's tempting you with free storage. You want that free storage? Just sign up. What could go wrong?
The Android faithful nearly started a riot on the internet last week when the Play Store listing for QuickPic suddenly came under the control of Cheetah Mobile. Now the developer of QuickPic, Nanling Zheng has posted a rundown of the situation on Google+. He says the entire QuickPic team has joined Cheetah Mobile, and you have nothing to worry about. But do you?
QuickPic is a nice little Android photo gallery-slash-viewer. Over several years it has gained a comfortable userbase thanks to steady updates, excellent communication with users, plenty of extra features, and an impressive adherence to Android design standards. So when QuickPic fans discovered that the app had been sold and re-published by Cheetah Mobile, they were, to put it mildly, pissed. They began flooding the app's Play Store page under the new developer "Cheetah Mobile Cloud (NYSE:CMCM)" with disparaging reviews almost immediately.
There's a new beta of (almost) everyone's favorite gallery app available right now on APK Mirror. Yes, QuickPic v4.5 is ready for immediate installation on your device of choice, and it contains a nifty photo selection gesture similar to the one from the Google Photos app. Check it out.
After a very short time in beta, QuickPic 4.0 is now in the process of going live. As we told you while it was being tested, this update brings a grab-bag of refinements and features. You may not notice much until you dig into your settings, but once you are there, the new theming ability will stick out the most. A variety of color schemes are available, which bring out the Material Design inspiration behind the interface.
The folks behind QuickPic have released a beta that expands on the stable version's Material-inspired looks with a heaping dose of color, lets you automatically save local folders to the cloud, and adds in a number of other enhancements. We've made the download available at the bottom of this page. But first, here's what has changed.
Back when I was using CyanogenMod on my Galaxy S3 and when Google didn't have a decent Gallery alternative, QuickPic was my go-to replacement photo browser. It was fast at combing through thousands of images and had a clean and clear interface that made it easy to get to the photos you wanted to view. Even though I personally have less reasons to use QuickPic now, many users are still hooked on its lightness, speed, and simplicity. For those millions of QuickPic lovers, the app just pushed an update to v3.9 that brings some Material elements.
Each smartphone comes with a gallery app, but considering how diverse the Android smartphone landscape is, the one you end up with varies from device to device. If you want an identical experience across devices, the best approach may be to turn to a third-party app, and while you're at it, you might as well choose one that's spiffy and straightforward. QuickPic is one of our top picks in this area, and now the app's developer has opened up a beta community for testers and dropped a new beta release for them to get their hands on.