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Phone backup: what it is, why you need it and how to set it up in 10 minutes

If your phone breaks or gets stolen, photos and contacts are gone for good. Unless you have a backup. Here's how to turn it on for Android and iPhone, once and for all.

Tecnonota Staff · · 2 min read

Cyber for Humans
Level
beginner
Time
10 minutes (plus the first upload)
What you need
Your phone, connected to your home Wi-Fi

Your phone holds the photos of your kids, everyone’s numbers, the WhatsApp chats with the people you love. If it falls in the water, if it’s stolen, or if it simply stops turning on, all of that goes away. A backup is the safety copy that lets you get everything back on a new phone, just as it was. Turning it on takes ten minutes and then it runs by itself.

In plain words

Backup: a copy of everything on your phone, saved "in the cloud". Cloud: Google's or Apple's computers, in a guarded building, where the copy stays safe even if your phone is destroyed. Only you can open it, with your password.

On Android (Samsung, Xiaomi, Motorola and all the others)

  1. Open Settings (the gear icon).
  2. Tap Google, then Backup. On some phones the path is Settings > System > Backup. If you can't find it, use the search magnifier at the top of Settings and type "backup".
  3. Turn on the Backup by Google One switch (or "Back up to Google Drive").
  4. Tap Back up now. The first time can take up to an hour: leave the phone charging and connected to Wi-Fi.
  5. Open the Google Photos app, tap your picture at the top right, then Photos settings > Backup and turn on the switch. Your photos are saved separately this way, and you can also find them from a computer at photos.google.com.

On iPhone

  1. Open Settings and tap your name at the top of the screen.
  2. Tap iCloud, then iCloud Backup.
  3. Turn on the Back Up This iPhone switch, then tap Back Up Now.
  4. Go back, tap Photos and turn on Sync this iPhone: your photos go to iCloud.
Don't worry:

The backup doesn't use up your mobile data: it only runs over Wi-Fi, at night, while the phone is charging. You don't have to remember anything.

“Not enough storage”: what it means

Google gives you 15 GB for free, Apple 5 GB. If you have lots of photos, after a while a warning appears that storage is full and the backup stops. At that point you have two choices: pay for the 100 GB plan (around 2 or 3 euros a month, cancel whenever you like) or free up space following our guide. For most people the couple of euros a month is the right choice: it’s the price of a coffee to never lose a photo again.

What about WhatsApp?

Chats have their own separate backup. In WhatsApp tap the three dots at the top right (on iPhone: Settings at the bottom), then Chats > Chat backup and choose “Daily”. On iPhone the backup goes to iCloud, on Android to Google Drive.

How to know it’s working

Go back to the backup page a day later: under the heading you’ll see “Last backup: today at …”. If that’s there, you’re fine. Check it once a month, maybe on the day you pay the bills.

Sources

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