There are a few reasons why you might want to back up your phone. You may want to transfer your files to another device, or maybe you’re making some changes to the system that you’re not sure about.

You may also simply want to make sure that you have a backup just in case your smartphone goes missing or breaks.

Either way, backing up your phone on Android is relatively easy. Here’s how to do it.

Step 1: Find the right menu under Settings

The option to back up your Android phone is under your Settings menu. However, the exact section of the menu you need to visit depends on the brand of your phone.

On Huawei phones, this option is under your System menu. On Samsung, it’s under the General Management menu.

You’ll know you’ve found the right menu when you see the option to 'Backup & restore' or 'Create backup'.

Step 2: Select the account for your backup

Your phone will give you a few options regarding which account you want to save your backup to. You can either choose to save it to your Google account, or the account for your phone brand such as your Samsung account.

However, we recommend that you upload the backup to your Google account since it acts as a central account for all your Android settings and apps, regardless of phone brand.

Choosing your Google Account will mean that your backup is saved to Google Drive. To create a new backup, simply select 'Back up now'.

Step 3: Create the backup

Once you’ve selected the option to back up your data, the phone will do the rest. This takes a bit of time depending on how much data you have on your phone and how long it has been since your last backup.

Things that will be backed up include your contacts, device settings, photos, videos, text messages and more.

You can also create a local backup on your device, but a cloud backup ensures that even if you break or lose your device you can still access the backup.

How to restore the backup

If something does happen and you need to restore your phone to the backup settings and data, you will be able to do this in your Settings. This will be under the same menu where you created the backup.

You will simply need to select the 'Restore' option.

If you created a backup with Google, you can set apps to automatically restore backed up settings and data whenever you re-install them.

You will only see the option to restore your entire phone to its previous settings if you've performed a factory reset on your device.

Remember that both backing your phone up to a cloud service like Google Drive, and restoring your info, can use a large amount of data. Make sure you have a data bundle, or consider setting your phone to back up over Wi-Fi only. 

Get more handy tips

Check out our useful articles that will help you make the most of your phone, plus a series of articles to help you with everyday Vodacom tasks, like finding your PUK.