How to backup your Android phone
Everyone today uses either an Android or an IOS mobile phone. Mobile phones have played a massive role in our day to day life. Most of us even work from our mobile and now it is become a part of education and much more.
Everyday, we use our mobile phones for a range of variety of uses. We chat, email, browse, store data, store contact and addresses and most importantly our photos which become a part of our memories past and present.
There have been many ways in which one can back up their data, some copy folders from their phones to their PC and laptops, some use back up specific apps and some do it the right way, so what is the right way ?
In this writeup I shall share with you a wide array of tools which are free and are already on your mobile phone to back up your data.
Let’s have a broader look shall we?
With Google
Backing up most of your data is actually pretty easy with Google, and it has gotten far easier over the past few years.
Photos and videos
If you’re not already using Google Photos, you should be. The service automatically backs up every photo and video you take to the cloud, so you’ll never have to manually backup your media ever again. If the Photos app isn’t already on your phone, you can download it from the play store. Once it’s installed, you’ll need to make sure Photos is set to automatically backup your files. Here’s how to do that:
Open the Google Photos app
In the menu, head to Settings
Tap ‘Backup & sync’
Make sure the switch is turned on
The best part about Google Photos? You can upload as many files as you’d like for free. Photos and videos will have a maximum upload quality of 1080p for the free unlimited storage option, which should be good enough for most people. If you’d like to keep the original resolution quality of your photos and videos, you can, but it will count against your Google Drive storage limits. Here’s how to check your Google Photos upload quality:
Open the Google Photos app
In the menu, head to Settings
Tap ‘Backup & sync’
Tap ‘Upload size’
Choose the option you’d like (High quality with free unlimited storage, or Original with Google Drive storage limits)
Google Drive
Google Drive lets you store your other files in the cloud, which means they’ll be accessible from any connected device. To manually upload folders and files, follow these instructions:
Download the Google Drive app, if you don’t have it already
In the app, press on the ‘+’ button
Press ‘Upload’
Select the file(s) you’d like to backup
That’s it!
Settings And Apps
To backup your phone’s settings and apps, you’ll want to use Android Backup Service. This service essentially backs up the apps you use and the settings that you have selected in most Google apps, making it easy to restore those settings on a new phone. Follow the instructions below to activate it:
Open your smartphone’s Settings app
Scroll down to “Accounts and Backup” and tap on it
Tap on ‘Backup and restore”
Toggle on the “Back up my data” switch and add your account, if it’s not there already.
General settings and preferences
When you powered up your Android device for the first time, you probably signed in with your primary Google account. This is critical — because that same account is your key to the vast majority of your automatically backed up data.
On the system level, that includes most of your Android settings and preferences — everything from approved Wi-Fi networks and passwords to your language and input settings, date and time settings, and display preferences. You can confirm all of that’s being backed up by going into the System section of your phone’s settings, tapping “Advanced,” and then tapping “Backup.”
Apps and app data
The list of apps you’ve installed from the Play Store is always synced with Google’s servers, and when you first sign into any new Android device, you’ll be given the opportunity to restore that complete set of applications or to cherry-pick certain titles from within the list. (That option typically comes up if you opt not to restore everything via a physical, USB-cable connection between your new and old phones.) If you’ve had more than one Android device active on your account recently, you’ll be able to choose which device you want to use as the source.
Google also provides an expanded app backup system that saves and restores app-specific data — everything from sign-ins to preferences and any other relevant elements from within your actual apps. It’s worth noting that this requires some level of integration and support on the developers’ parts, however, so it works more effectively with some apps than others.
Calendar, Contacts, and Email
Backing up these business-critical areas is actually quite easy — because nowadays, almost all calendar, contact, and email data is inherently cloud-based (or at the very least cloud-connected). In other words, you don’t have to back up your phone’s email or calendar data because it’s already stored in the cloud; you can simply open the email or calendar app from another device to retrieve it.
Google’s own email and calendar apps — Gmail and Google Calendar, respectively, both of which come preinstalled on many phones and are readily available for anyone to download — store data with Google’s servers by default but can also work with Exchange and other third-party accounts. You can add third-party accounts directly into the Gmail app; with Exchange, once your account is added into Gmail, it should then show up in Google Calendar as well.
The one asterisk worth mentioning is contacts, as some manufacturers and even carriers provide their own interfaces for organizing contact information — and those interfaces don’t always sync with Google’s Contacts system by default. Suffice it to say, this isn’t ideal: If your data is set to sync with. Similarly, if your contact data is being stored only on the device’s local storage or SIM card by default, you’re asking for trouble down the line.
Go into your phone’s Contacts app and look in its settings to see if there’s any option for where your contacts are being synced or stored. The specifics vary from one device to the next, depending on the manufacturer and carrier — but often, when a company puts its own solution in place of Google’s, it’ll give you the ability to switch to Google’s Contacts system if you want.
Some phones’ Contacts apps may also ask where you want to store a contact every time you add someone new. Be sure to always select Google for maximum consistency and accessibility moving forward.
You can confirm that your contacts are, in fact, being synced with Google Contacts in that same aforementioned Backup section of your system settings (after you tap your phone’s name — or tap “Google account”. You can also always access Google Contacts via its dedicated website to see that your data is there.
Messaging
Backing up and saving your SMS data so you can restore it on a future phone is generally pretty painless on Android.
n a change from the recent past, Google now automatically backs up all SMS data from all Android devices. This happens regardless of who made your phone or what messaging app you’re using
That backup, however, is limited to 25MB of data and does not include MMS messages — things like photos and videos sent via text. If you want your multimedia messages to be saved, you’ll need to sign up for a paid Google One plan.
Google One Backup Plan
Introduced back in 2018, Google One is a type of program that may have escaped your attention. This kind of program is suitable for those who are on the verge of utilizing their Google Drive quota or have already exhausted it altogether.
What is Google One?
Google One is a paid subscription service that can be tacked into a Google account. It allows users to expand storage beyond the usual free quota of 15GB allotted by Google which includes Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos.
Benefits Of Google One
One great benefit of the Google One Plan is that you get access Google experts, who can help you with any Google related questions, like how their products work. Signing up for Google One also gives you the benefit of adding upto five family members to your expanded storage plan, without any additional cost, and without sacrificing privacy.
How To Sign Up For Google One
Those that interested in the service should either visit one.google.com or get the Android One app from the google play store and follow the instructions on the site or the app.
WhatsApp has become a day to day tool we use to chat and most live and breathe through it. It has become so much important to our way of communicating that we can’t do a day without using it and therefore, needs backing up just like any other service or data.
Set up Google Drive backups
Open WhatsApp.
Tap More options > Settings > Chats > Chat backup > Back up to Google Drive.
Select a backup frequency other than Never.
Select the Google account you’d like to back up your chat history to. …
Tap Back up over to choose the network you want to use for backups.
Conclusion
Today we learnt how to back up your Android and your WhatsApp. Backing up data is an important part of using our smartphones that we can’t do without. If you fail, you loose data, if you change your device and don’t have a back up you, loose valuable data that you might not get again. Backing up data is just the one thing that one must practice on a monthly, if not weekly basis, unless you’re as paranoid as I am when it comes to backing up my data that I do it on a daily basis.
Please do leave comments or suggestion on how the article was, any feedback is welcomed.
You can email the author on vishal.kadakia@gmail.com for comments and suggestions
Very informative
Awesome super i never knew this thank you