Knowing how to backup your Android phone or Tablet is an essential ‘life’ skill to have.
With the growing numbers of cyber attack globally, now is the perfect time to make sure you have a backup of your Android smartphone or tablet, as this means if something goes wrong, then you can easily restore your Android device back to the way it was before.
Android is ready-made for syncing with cloud services, so wherever possible, use online services to back up important data such as emails, contacts and calendars.
Gmail is a great service that makes backing up data in your Android device easy and straightforward.
If you use an Android device, it means you already have a Google account, a Gmail and this Google account is already attached to the device.
With this account, and the Google Sync feature on your Android phone, you can easily back up contacts, email, calendar and bookmarks.
If your Android device is full of precious photos and home videos, this guide will show you how to back them all up too.
Here is how to backup your Android device using Google Backup & Restore
- Go to Settings > Accounts > tap Google > select the Google account you wish to use
- Check everything you want to sync as shown below:
- Go back to Settings > Backup & reset
- Activate ‘Back up my data’ if it is not already activated
- Select the same account you selected above from ‘Backup account’
- Activate ‘Automatic restore’ as shown below:
Note: For those on Android versions older than 6.0., the illustrations above look similar, and has the same options overall.
‘Backup & reset’ will save almost everything, but it is advisable to make sure your documents, photos and videos are saved to the Google Drive app on your Android device.
Google Photos is an option you can use for your photos as well and they are automatically backed up in Google servers.
With this process, you do not have to worry when you lose your phone.
Once you sign into the selected Google account on a new Android phone or tablet you will instantly have all your contacts, browser bookmarks, movies, music, and even photos restored if you followed this guide.