Mobile Data Backup?
When did you last backup your mobile data?
This is sometimes an easily forgotten task or it becomes one of those “I’ll do it later jobs”. However, we use our phones, a lot, the question you have to ask is “can I afford to lose my data?”
The best practice would be to set up a system to regularly back your phone up, as soon as you take it out the box. If you haven’t done this already here is a quick explanation of different methods for backing up your mobile data.
Apple
Method: Cloud Backup
Apple have their own platform for backups called iCloud, which you set up as you start using your new phone. As you may have guessed from the name is a this cloud backup system which can be used with all Apple products such as the iPod, iPad and MacBook. iCloud will back up your contacts, iTunes purchases, photos, videos, and messages (iMessage and text) as well as app and system data. The up side to this is that you can access this information across most of the Apple platforms. The downside is that you only get 5GB space for free and once it’s full that means either no more data is added to the backup or you have to purchase more storage.
Method: Computer Backup
Another way is to back up your data to your computer using iTunes. This also has it’s pros and cons. An advantage of this method is that you get a lot more space than you would with iCloud. This would benefit people who use their phones for taking pictures and videos. A downside to this method that you need to connect to your computer back up your device, and if you don’t have access to your PC then you don’t have access to your backup.
Android
Method: Cloud Backup
Google, like Apple, have their own method of backing up your data called Google Sync. Unlike Apple, this offers a little more flexibility. Where Apple is restricted to only their products, Google Sync can be moved to almost all hardware running Google’s operating system Android. This makes moving your data from a Samsung to a Motorola really simple. It’s not just phones your data is available to either, backing up with Google makes your data available to you via a web browser, simply signing in at www.google.co.uk allows you to see any emails on your Gmail account, any photos or videos you have taken, using Gmail you can also see your contacts.
However, unlike iCloud, Google Sync does not backup any text messages you have, although there are apps in the play Store which will do this.
Method: Computer Backup
Also much like Apple you can back your phone up to your PC. Downloading the Android File Transfer tool will allow you to connect your phone to your PC and use it as if it was a USB pen drive. The one major downside to this is that whilst you can simply drag and drop the data from your phone to your PC, you have to know where to look for it afterwards. For example, your photos won’t always be stored in a folder called “Photos” the usual location for these will be something like “Android/DCIM” and from there it may still be in folder under a different name if you’re using 3rd party apps “Android/DCIM/Instagram” for instance.