In our daily smartphone activity, there are some certain things that are very important and shouldn’t be overlooked and one of them is backup and restore Android phone. It is very essential and should not be ignored.
File loss can be heartbreaking and disheartening depending on what you have on your phone.
There are many things that can make you want to backup your Android phone.
Some of the things include trying to reset your phone, installing new Android rom or update, flashing custom rom or having a smartphone bug.
Today, I am going to guide you on how to backup and restore Android phone easily without much hassle.
Without wasting much of your time, let’s get started.
For best understanding, I am going to explain to you possible methods by which you can backup and restore android phone easily.
The reason for explaining is that a lot of people are misguided when it comes to complete phone backup and restore.
To be able to backup and restore Android phone completely, your phone must be rooted and possibly have a custom recovery installed.
Other types of recovery only involve backing up of just your contacts, your installed app and media files.
Anything apart from that requires root permission which means your phone must be rooted.
We won’t be discussing how to root Android phones here because rooting differs from one phone to the other.
Though there are general methods on how to root smartphones which we added the link in the post.
You can follow it to know if you can root your phone with it, I hope you know what rooting is.
So on this guide, we are explaining the two methods which include backup and restore Android phone without root and with root.
How to backup and restore Android phone without root method.
This guide is simple and does not require any special skill to know how to get things done.
It only requires you to download some android applications to begin.
Like we mentioned before, what these apps do is that they back up mainly some selected options.
User can choose to backup just their contacts, messages calendar and to-do lists, Android application and some media files like pictures and gallery file.
To get started with this method, we will be listing some of the apps you can use to backup and restore the android phone.
Apps that can be used to Backup and restore Android phone
Backup your mobile
This one of the best that gets the job done when it comes to backup and restore Android in android phone.
It has features that most app doesn’t have or should I say that it offers features more than most backup and restore apps.
Its user can backup not just their contact, messages, and media but it goes to the extent of backing up some other contents and features like your smartphone settings, VPN settings, dictionary, call logs and some other.
There is also an option to upload the backup to cloud storages like Google Drive, One Drive and Dropbox.
You also have the option to backup your content to an external SD card for safer and lesser data consumption.
App Backup & Restore
This was once my favorite before I don’t know what happened and some features became unavailable.
Its one of the best I have used, but things changed when I got a new phone, maybe it’s not compatible with my new android version.
It can be used to backup all your android application, it can be used to backup and restore your contact list and call logs.
With App Backup & Restore, you can backup and restore all your SMS to your phone.
Users can choose to backup their files to the internal storage or their SD card for easier restore.
There are pro and free version of this application which contains little advertisements that appear after backups.
There is also an option to automatically perform a backup anytime an app is installed on the device, therefore, saving you a lot of time.
That will save you the time of doing the backup manually, even if you forget to do so.
To restore those applications you backed up, you have to select the storage on which the backup was stored.
Restoring the contents and applications is easy and fast.
Google Photos
Google photo is not just an app for viewing and playing videos on your Android smartphones.
You can also use it to store all your pictures and videos to google cloud storage.
Though this requires you to have a mobile data subscription or WiFi available before proceeding.
You can choose to upload your pictures and videos only when connected to a WiFi.
if you have an enough data subscription, you can choose to make use of the two options which is upload using data and WiFi.
With Google Photos, you can backup and restore Android phones pictures and videos to your phone whenever you get a new smartphone.
The only thing required is to enter the google account associated with the old Google Photos.
Unfortunately, this can only backup your Photos and Videos but it will help you not to loose even a one single photos of those memorable moments.
This app is one of the advance Android backup that let you backup and restore Android applications with ease.
It comes with a lot of options.
some of the options include
- Backup apps to local storage.
- Backup and upload app to cloud storage like OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox.
- Share app link to social media
- Install all backup.
- Share app through a various app like Xender.
- Uninstall app
- Get information about your apps.
From the features above, you can see that this app can help you a lot to backup and restore Android phones applications.
With App Backup and Share Pro, you can backup your android application core files like obb and data files.
Obb and data files are files where the settings and media of your android applications and games are stored.
Whenever you uninstall an app and install it back, you will find out that it starts afresh because it’s data was wiped during uninstall.
This app can help you save those files(though it requires root).
You can all backup and restore Android phone system app(preinstalled app) to the available storage of your choice.
Unfortunately, there is no option to backup some certain things like call logs and media.
Backup and Restore Android Phone Using Android local backup
This method does not require any app installation as this option is a preconfigured backup and restore option from most manufacturers and OS.
It is mainly configured inside the Contact and Message app preinstalled on most android.
The options differ from one smartphone brand to the other.
This option allows you to separately backup your contacts list to your phone same as messages.
To do that, you to navigate to your contacts app >> go to import and export contacts and choose where to export to your contacts.
Contact files are normally saved in .vcf formats at the root of your internal storage.
It’s best to choose external storage so as not to lose your files when you wipe your internal storage.
When it comes to messages, the option also varies from one device to another.
There are many smartphones that don’t come with the option to backup messages, instead, they add something like syn with google.
On Xiaomi smartphones, you can sync your messages and contacts with your mi account which makes it very easier to restore your contacts and messages on your new Xiaomi smartphone.
From the guides and options listed above, you will discover that it’s better to use a 3rd party app like one of those listed above to perform backup and restore instead of using the default apps.
Perform backup and restore on rooted phone.
This option is one of the best if not the best for many users.
its quite alright some people do not want their phone to be rooted due to reasons like security and data reasons.
But the truth remains that you achieve a lot of things when your device is rooted than when it’s not rooted.
On a rooted phone, you can perform a complete backup without losing any of your files even the smallest one.
On a rooted phone, you can take backup with both third-party apps and custom recoveries like TWRP and CWM.
Like I said in the beginning, getting root is quite hard and close to impossible in some smartphones but they can still be achieved.
The best method to get a complete backup and restore On rooted smartphone is to use a custom recovery.
Some of the custom recoveries include twrp, cwm and some other recoveries.
Root helps you backup everything on your Android smartphones including your old operating system Incase you want to go back.
You can also make backups on your desired storage like internal storage or external storage.
Note that it’s always advisable to backup your files and contents to the external storage as you are likely to wipe your internal storage anytime.
If you have a rooted phone, you can perform a total application backup using one of the apps listed above which is App backup and share pro.
Though the app has a paid and free version, but you can perform the most task on the free version.
There are some other apps that can also help you and achieve complete backup On rooted smartphones.
Rooted smartphones backup and restore Apps.
These apps can help you perform a complete backup of your smartphone files and data.
You can use them to backup your phone storage files and data completely to your external storage.
Some of them are
Titanium Backup
This is one of the most extensive backup and restore app for rooted android phones.
It comes with many options and features.
some of the features of Titanium Backup includes
- complete backup of apps installed on your phone storage.
- Complete backup and restore of system apps and data.
- Different types of file compression such as 7zip and rar.
With Titanium Backup, you can do an almost-complete backup of your rooted android phone except that it doesn’t backup phone contacts and messages.
You can always do that with your one of the free apps listed above.
The final method of backing up your android phone completely is the Backup of android phone with a custom recovery
Backup and Restore of android phone with a custom recovery.
This method is the most advanced method of backing up everything on your rooted android phone.
It involves flashing a custom recovery to your phone.
The custom recovery will replace the stock android recovery.
It is always advisable to backup your stock recovery with root apps like flashify or you can extract it using Windows cmd command.
To backup your phone using a custom recovery, you have to boot your phone to recovery and select backup.
You can backup just the data of your phone, you can as well backup system path of your smartphone.
You can choose to backup the complete memory of your smartphone.
Backing up the complete smartphone gives you the chance of going back to the old operating system whenever you like.
You can install and backup more than two operating systems on your phone and restore the one you think it’s more stable for you anytime you want.
Making use of custom recovery requires an android advanced user, so make sure you know what you are doing.
Conclusion
To summaries, everything, always perform a manual backup of your contacts and apps using one of the apps listed above.
After that, backup your applications and games using one of the apps best convenient for you.
Then make sure they are on your external storage(SD card).
Possibly Copy those files to your PC for safekeeping.
Now you can go ahead with the reason why you want to backup and restore your android phone.
If you experience any problem on How to backup and restore Android phone easily, you can free to drop off a comment below.
Good luck.