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How to backup android phone with Google

How to backup android phone with Google

With our phones being such an important part of our everyday life, the information we keep on them can be priceless. Data such as photos, videos, messages, contacts, app settings and more needs to be kept safe. The easiest way to do this is to ensure you are taking regular backups to an online cloud service.

Wondering if you have an Android phone?

Android Phone
The Android phone software is generally on any of the brands that aren’t Apple. Samsung, HTC, LG phones, Google phones, Huawei, Oppo and more. There are multiple companies offering cloud services to choose from for a backup but Android phones are very easily synced with Google’s services and if you choose Google, you can also enable automatic backups.

Backup photos on Android phone with Google Photos

An easy way to know your photos and videos are backed up is to turn on sync for Google photos.

Turn on automatic backup for Google Photos

  • Open the Google Photos App
  • Sign into your Google account
  • Select the circle at the top right with your account profile photo or initial
  • Go to photos settings then Back up & Sync
  • Toggle Back up and sync to on.
If you want to check if your photos are backed up, follow steps 1-3 above and you can view if the backup is complete. The downside to this method is it is only for media such as photos and videos. Other files and settings can’t be synced.

Save files from Android phone to Google Drive

Another option to backup an Android phone is to save specific files to Google Drive service.

  • Ensure you have the Google Drive app installed
  • In the App press the plus (+) button
  • Select the files you want to backup and save to the drive.
This method can be useful for important documents and maybe as an extra backup. The limitation with this way is that you need to add files manually and settings, contacts etc can’t be saved this way. To ensure automatic backups of all the data on your phone, the king of Google backups is Google One.
Google Drive

Automatically back up your Android phone with Backups by Google One

To backup all the data on your phone (to potentially transfer to a new one in the future), you can use Google’s cloud service – Google One.

Google One will backup App data, Call history, Contacts, Settings, Messages and photos and videos. It’s important to note that not all app data will be backed up depending on the app developer and you need to contact them directly if in doubt.

 

Set-up automatic backups with Google One

  • Open settings on your phone
  • Select Backup by Google One and follow the instructions (if your first time). OR Select Google then Backup
  • Select the data you want to backup and then Backup now

 

Turn Google One backup off

If you are having issues with your backups or lacking the space on your Google account, you may want to turn off the automatic backups.

  • Open the Google One app
  • Scroll down to the backups section and select View details
  • Turn off the data you don’t want to backup.
Google One

How much does Google One cost?

These methods are great to use to backup an Android phone, especially as Google syncs very easily with the software. An important consideration is that there may be a cost involved. If you are planning on storing lots of large files, photos or videos, you may find that the free 15GB of storage gets used up quickly. After that the pricing starts from $2.49 per month depending on how much storage you need.

Data Recovery Services Sunshine Coast

If you are reading this information because you have had a fatal error with your Android phone and are worried you may have lost your data. All may not be lost. We at Phone Expert have successfully recovered data from many phones that seemed critical. We would be happy to help you, please contact us to discuss or put in a free quote request.

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