If you own an iPhone, iPad or Mac, you would find Camera Roll in the device and you would see a feature known as Photo Stream. Both are not identical, neither are they the same thing but on different platforms. There is substantial difference between Photo Stream and Camera Roll.
Let us first understand what the two features are. Camera Roll is a feature inside the phone, tablet or laptop which will store the images you take inside the device itself. As you open the album and check out your gallery, you would see all the images you have taken. The images are stored using the memory of the device. If you use up all the memory on your device, then you cannot store any more photos, unless you delete some photos or other files that are taking up some space.
What is Photo Stream?
Photo Stream is not a feature on your phone, tablet or laptop. It is essentially a service included in the iCloud account. When you buy an Apple device, regardless of its model, you get an iCloud account. It has Photo Stream which is basically a platform that allows you to have your images hosted in the cloud which you can access from any compatible device.
Using Camera Roll
Camera Roll will be activated or available automatically when you use the device. Photo Stream is a free service but it needs to be activated. Photo Stream will not use up the allotted space in your iCloud account. It doesn’t have a subscription. Whether or not you opt for special features in your iCloud account, your Photo Stream feature will remain unaffected.
Camera Roll automatically lines up the photos you take. Once activated, Photo Stream will make the images available via your iCloud account so you can access them using any Apple device. Hence, an image taken using your iPhone will get hosted in your Photo Stream via Wi-Fi and you can access it from an iPad, Mac or MacBook.
How The Two Interact
If you delete an image from Camera Roll, it would remain on Photo Stream. If you delete an image from Photo Stream, it will remain on Camera Roll. You need to operate the two features separately. But you don’t need to manually backup an image or make it available on Photo Stream from Camera Roll. That is automated.
Camera Roll will have images subjected to the available memory or storage capacity on the device. Photo Stream will keep up to a thousand images and the iCloud server will only hold onto thirty days old images or snapshots.
