Home » Chat, contacts, photos and videos: how to backup an Android smartphone and live happily

Chat, contacts, photos and videos: how to backup an Android smartphone and live happily

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It has happened to everyone, sooner or later: the phone falls, the screen breaks and no longer responds to commands. Or it doesn’t break, and yet it won’t turn on anymore. Or we still decide to change it, because that new beautiful model has arrived and we just can’t do without it. Or maybe (and maybe it’s the worst option) a grandfather, aunt or elderly parent decides to change his or her phone. And it’s always up to someone younger and more tech-savvy to lend a hand to back up everything, without losing a single photo of their granddaughter, video, message, phone number or email address. How do you do? We rely on Google, of course.

First step: preparation
This guide is dedicated to Android smartphones because backing up on iPhones tends to be simpler (although not without risks, as anyone who has been cut off from iCloud or iTunes knows) and the first advice is not to get caught by surprise.

With the smartphone you are using connected to your Gmail account (and consequently to all the other Big G services), you need to search for the word “backup” in the Settings to get to a screen similar to the one you see here below, taken from a OnePlus 8 Pro: clicking on the switch at the top authorizes a periodic backup of the entire phone on Google Drive, obviously including the installed apps (and much more), which from that moment on will happen without us noticing or needing to worry about anything.


Also from this screen you can decide whether to allow the backup only when you are under wifi coverage (recommended) or to make one immediately, perhaps because you are ready to switch to the new smartphone. The “copy” of the phone’s internal memory will occupy part of our Drive space: at the moment, each account has 15 Gb available in the Google cloud and there is a specific page to find out how many they are using and also to buy more (the “basic” plan, the one from 19.99 euros a year, is more than enough for most non-professional uses).

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Warning: this backup stores all the apps on your phone, but not their position on the various screens. When you use it to configure a new phone, you will then need to go and place them where you want them, according to your preferences and habits.

Once this is done, you are (you should be) pretty sure not to lose anything important, even in the case of the accidental fall mentioned at the beginning.

Second step: Whatsapp and Telegram
The two messaging apps par excellence are an exception (because sms, by now, who uses them most?), Which are quite different in this too: Telegram does not need backup, but will “recognize” you when you switch to yours new smartphone and basically you shouldn’t lose anything, while with Whatsapp you have to do it, if you want to be sure to find all the messages from all your contacts.

The procedure is quite simple: after opening Whatsapp, click in sequence on Settings, Chat, Chat Backup and you will arrive at a screen similar to the one you see below: you can make a backup immediately, choose how often to do it in automatic way (weekly is more than enough, monthly is a bit risky), whether to do it only under wifi coverage or not and whether to include videos as well.

Chat, contacts, photos and videos: how to backup an Android smartphone and live happily

Once activated, even the periodic backup of Whatsapp on Google Drive takes place without you noticing or having to worry about anything, while when you do it manually (again, because you are ready to switch from the old phone to the one you just bought ) this is one of the slowest steps in the whole procedure. It is not the fault of the app or the smartphone, but of the Italian telephone operators, which continue to offer upload speeds that are drastically lower than the download ones and definitely not in step with the times.

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Third step: the address book and photos (and videos)
The last important information not to be missed when changing phones (or if your phone is lost, stolen, broken) is the address book and pictures and videos. Again, our advice is to rely on Google and use the Contacts app and Photo (downloadable here).

On first use, Contacts will ask (or should ask) for permission to access the contents of the smartphone’s Address Book and will store all names and related information, including e-mail addresses. From that moment on, you will use it as the default app for saving phone numbers (selecting Always, when asked), instead of the one already installed, and you will be sure not only not to lose anything, but also to find everything on every device on which you log in with your Google account.

In this case, there is no need to set up any backup: you save a new phone number and make a copy of it in the cloud practically in real time.

Chat, contacts, photos and videos: how to backup an Android smartphone and live happily

Google Photos works in a similar way: on first use it will (perhaps) ask for permission to access the smartphone Gallery and will store all its contents. From then on, it will replace the default app and every time you take a photo or shoot a video a copy of it will be created in the cloud, which you will find not only on your next phone, but (again) on every device on which you will log in with your Google account.

In the case of Photos, the backup must be activated by clicking first on Settings and then on Backup and synchronization (screen above), also deciding how to do it and on which elements.

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In practice: what to do step by step
What has been written so far should protect you from “accidents”, because if the automatic and periodic backups (of the phone, chats, address book and images) have been activated correctly, you should be more or less protected from any unexpected events.

When, on the other hand, the change is expected, that is when you are about to switch from one smartphone to another, there are basically two steps to follow:
– first the manual backup of the entire phone on Google Drive (which also brings with it Contacts and Photos);
– then the manual backup of the Whatsapp chats (which can then be uninstalled, so as not to miss a single message).

At the first access to the new smartphone, simply choose Restore from the Cloud to see it configured as the previous one.

It is true that many manufacturers now have dedicated apps for switching between phones, but they don’t always work from one brand to another. And above all, the procedure described above has allowed the writer to always save everything by going through dozens of phones, even from iPhone to Android. And also that we still have some weird photos taken in February 2008.

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