Gadgetory

backing up your data is a smart idea just in case losing everything is never fun I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and these are a few solutions for how you can backup your Android smartphone earlier this week I went over several different ways you can backup your iPhone if you're an Android user you're also in luck there are plenty of options for syncing all of your information from Android the first time you turn on your device you are prompted to sign into your Google account from there you are given the option to sync all sorts of different content calendars Drive gmail contacts and even pictures to Google Plus but on the background Google also syncs your Wi-Fi passwords and all sorts of other information and it's a little ambiguous you can't really tell upfront exactly what's being synced and you can't control it you can either turn it off or on and there's no way to pick and choose beyond the account syncs all of your purchased and previously downloaded applications are in the Play Store anything you purchase from Google Play as far as movies music or anything else are also stored in the cloud your contacts are also synced through Google and if you choose you can also export those contacts directly to your phone storage and you can import contacts that have previously been exported Google social network allows you to instantly upload your pictures and those pictures can also be synced to your photo album but like on iOS you can also sync your information elsewhere I personally use Dropbox to upload all of the pictures taken with my phone's camera the main idea behind Google's backup options is that when you buy a new phone the first time you turn it on all you have to do is log into your Google account and all of your information is there contacts calendars you name it but custom interfaces and modifications tend to make Google's backup options go haywire sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't and it hasn't always been exactly reliable and age-old and probably the most reliable way to backup your Android phone is called an Android backup it requires root access and a custom recovery something to the effect of clockworkmod and all you have to do is reboot your phone into recovery find the backup and restore option and choose either backup or backup to an external sd card hit the power button to select and wait it may take forever to backup but the benefit of this is that when you need it all you have to do is go back into the recovery and restore the image in the also take a lot of time but it restores the phone exactly to how it was before a problem with nandroid is that say you don't need to restore the entire image all you need is the application data or something to that effect that's where titanium comes into play problem is it also requires root access if your phone is not rooted you can't use titanium and you can't use it to back up your applications so it is effectively useless to anyone who isn't rooted however there is actually a new application that is also from the people who created ClockworkMod it is called Carbon not to be mistaken with the Twitter application and it backs up all of your applications and your application data and stores it to drive a computer or a local storage you can also schedule backups to happen whenever you need them this takes a little time as well especially if you have a lot of applications but it does the trick you're not going to lose any of your applications if you backup using carbon there is a light version of carbon that is free or you can buy the premium version for $4.99 clearly when it comes to backing up Android devices there's no shortage of options there are options for route users people who aren't rooted and everyone in between Google's built-in options do pretty well there is no reason to worry about losing contacts and your pictures are uploaded directly to Google Plus so they're safe as well but if you need more such as application backup with data or even a system image there's an option for you if this video helped be sure to click the like button below subscribe to the channel and make sure to follow us on all of our social networks google plus at plus PocketNow facebook.com slash PocketNow or twitter at pocket now I'm Taylor Martin and I will see you next time