Data Backup Digest

A lot of us store our personal data on our smartphones nowadays. Perhaps more than on our computers. Your smartphone holds texts, contact information, photos, videos and much more. Imagine for a moment if you lost all of that data and were unable to recover it. Does that fill you with dread? If so, it’s time to back up the data on your phone. If you own a Samsung device, we’re going to show you how to do that using some of Samsung’s unique features.

Samsung has its own account system, which ties into the cloud, but first we’re going to look at what Google offer out of the box with Android devices.

To begin, open your app drawer and go to Settings > Cloud and accounts > Backup and restore. There is a section here called ‘Google account’. First, check that the backup account is set to where you want your data to be linked to. By default, this will be whatever Google account you have linked to your phone, but you can tap this to add a different account if you prefer.

Once done, slide ‘Back up my data’ to be on. This will now automatically back up device and app data to Google Drive. This includes Wi-Fi passwords, your phone logs, app settings and some related files. Note that this isn’t a comprehensive backup of everything on your phone, but it’s a start.

Return to the Backup and Restore page. Now we’re going to look at what Samsung has to offer. Beneath the ‘Samsung account’ section, head into the Backup settings. This links to your Samsung account. You can use the sliders to customise what specific data you want to be backed up. Once done, slide ‘auto back up’ to be on.

Your apps will be automatically backed up every 24 hours providing that your phone is charging, is connected to a Wi-Fi network, and that the screen has been off for more than an hour. Problems can arise if you’re reading or writing data while a backup is taking place, so these checks ensure that won’t happen.

Your contacts and calendar data will always be backed up. You can then choose to back up your phone call and message history, clock data, home screen settings, application data, Samsung settings, messages, music, voice recording, documents, and general settings information.

This is basically all of the important data on your phone and it means that if you ever lose your device or suffer from lost data for whatever reason, you can then restore it from the cloud. To do so, just navigate to Backup and Restore > Restore and it’ll then detect your Samsung account and let you pull the relevant data.

If you own multiple Samsung devices, like a phone and tablet, you can also use the Samsung Cloud to keep your data synchronised. Note that this is different from the backup functionality, which is really there to help you recover. It can be accessed via Cloud and Accounts > Samsung Cloud, which will then guide you through the setup process.