Syncing your app data regularly

One of the most important things on your smartphones are the apps. All the apps we use save data on the phone. Nearly every app these days requires logging in, so the phone saves all the data online.

Google has you covered here. When you download an app, it gets synced to your Google account. This means you can reinstall all your apps or your formatted device or a new device, without going through the trouble of picking and installing them separately. Before you’re able to do that, you need to take a backup of all your apps. This option can be found in your phone’s Privacy settings, under Accounts.

Here, click on the Google account that you want all your data synced with. Once you do that, you’ll see the list of all the apps from other apps synced to your Gmail account. Besides app data, you can also sync your Contacts, Calendar, Gmail, Google+ and many other services. With this done, restoring your app data on a new device is simple. All you have to is open Google play, look for My Apps in the menu icon and reinstall all the apps that you want again. If you do a clean install, you’ll also be prompted during startup whether you want to install all the apps you had installed on the old device.

Backing up your SMS messages

If you’re planning on saving your SMS history, that’s a feature that isn’t built into Android yet. There are third-party that can backup and restore all your SMS’. We recommend SMS Backup +, a free, easy-to-use app. Once you link it to your Google account, simply click on Backup and the app will save your SMS, MMS and even your call log. You can restore them when you like.

All your SMS threads can be found on your Google account under a title called SMS. The app even lets you set a schedule for automatic backups, so you don’t have to do them manually. Besides this app, there are plenty of other options such as SMS Backup & Restore, Super Backup: SMS and SMS to text, which  offer more or less the same features. Some even let you save SMS threads on online storage services like Dropbox and Google Drive.

Backup all your photos and videos to cloud

If your smartphone comes with Google Photos preinstalled, you have nothing to worry about. The app has an Auto Backup features that you can use to save all your photos and videos on your Google+ account online. You get nearly 15GB of free storage space available here. The app doesn’t just save photos and videos you’ve clicked on your phone, but also the ones that have been sent to you by others. You can also sync it with your Google account and access them whenever you want. Just make sure you turn on the feature.

Besides that, you can also use popular apps such as Picasa and Flickr that not only let you click photos but also let you upload them to online services. Flickr gives you 1TB of free storage space. Just make that the auto-sync features turned on and your privacy settings setup.

Third-party apps that take all the backup for you

If you want to backing up data a little easier, there are apps are designed specifically for it. Some of the ones that we like are My Backup, Helium and G Cloud. For free or a very small amount, these apps backup almost everything from your device from photos to app data, contacts, SMS messages, calendar, alarms, system settings and even browser bookmarks. All the data is usually backed up to their online servers. Some of these apps even integrate with your Dropbox or your Google Drive. You can even use these apps to take regular backups at a time set by you. Not to mention, restoring data from the app is very easy as well. So from one phone to another becomes a hassle-free process.

Backup data on your PC the traditional way

Besides saving data online, you can always keep a backup of your phone on your PC or laptop. All you need to do is copy all the folders from your device to your PC. For this you’ll have to connect your device to your PC with a micro USB cable. Simply copy all the folders to your desktop, preferably in a specific folder. If you think this is a little time consuming, then you can consider using the backup software tools. These software will automatically take the backup for you.  Some of the ones that we found were easy to use are, MOBILedit, Mobogenie, and Android PC Suite.

Tracking and resetting your phone remotely

This is handy if your phone ever gets lost or stolen. The best tool for this is Google's Android Device Manager. All you have to do is sync it with your Google account. Now in case your phone gets lost, all you have to do is go to the Android Device Manger’s website and login with the same Google account associated with the phone. You'll be able to see the phone's current location and you’ll also get the option to lock the device and erase everything on it. It's pretty helpful as you don't risk losing your data in the wrong hands. You’ll need to enable the Android Device Manager from your phone by going to Settings > Security > Device adminstrators. Here, tick the Android Device Manager option.

So these are some of things that can ensure you don’t lose data on your phone. So what are you waiting for? Let’s get to it! Also, if you want more information about safeguarding your phone on your brand new smartphone, then we recommend dropping in at a Reliance Digital store closest to you. We have many other solutions waiting for you.