Losing or breaking the smartphone can become a nightmare, but we can take some precautions by making sure to run Android backup regularly if this unfortunate hypothesis occurs. Also, when you need to upgrade your device, make sure you have a backup copy. In this way, if something goes wrong, you can easily go back to the condition you were in before upgrading. In this article, we will see how to save data with Helium backup on Android devices.
Android devices are designed to be synchronized with cloud services. This way you can use online services to back up important data such as e-mails, contacts and calendars. For example, the Google account is a great service that allows you to back up all this data from your Android device in an easy and direct way.
On Android devices, the Google Sync feature allows you to back up contacts, e-mails, calendars, and bookmarks. This is provided that you are using Google applications to manage this data.
Android can also perform critical data backup internally. It is a feature that has improved over time but is not yet complete enough like the one we see on iOS.
Precisely for this reason, it is better to take a double precaution in the backup. Read on to find out how to back up Android.
Activate Android backup
The first step, and also the simplest, is to run the backup function built into Android. To check if this is activated on your device, go to Settings> Backup and Restore and make sure that ” Backup personal data ” as well as ” Automatic recovery ” are activated.
This will automatically back up your Android data and settings online if your device is connected to a Google account. If you need to reset your Android device, or if you buy a new one, then you can sign in with this Google account and the data and settings will be downloaded and restored.
This is one of the easiest ways to backup Android smartphone. But for a more reliable approach, I recommend using some third-party backup tools.
How to backup photos on Android
If you take a lot of photos with your Android device, I recommend you back them up regularly.
Android has an automatic backup function for photos taken. To make sure it’s enabled and working, open the Photos app, then tap the menu icon with the three horizontal lines. In the menu that opens, click on ” Settings ” and select ” Backup and synchronization “.
Now make sure that the switch next to ” Backup and Sync ” is enabled. From this menu you can also choose the quality of the photos saved when you backup, and whether or not to enable synchronization under cellular data network. Remember that if you choose this option, you can exceed the limit of mobile data.
How to make Helium backup Android
There are also a number of third-party applications that can make it easy to create an Android smartphone backup.
Helium is one of these. If your Android device has root permissions, simply install the application and it’s all ready. If not, there are a couple of additional steps necessary to give Helium the correct access it needs to make the backup.
The first of these steps to perform Helium backup is to activate USB debugging of the phone. Go to Settings> Developer Options> USB Debugging . If you can not see the ” Developer Options ” item, which is hidden by default on many phones, go to Settings> Info on your phone and click on the ” build number ” seven times to display the item.
The next step is to download and install the Helium Desktop client on your PC or Mac. Launch it, then follow the instructions, connect your Android device to your computer via USB cable when prompted and launch the Helium application.
Helium backup: configuration
Once Helium has all access rights, you can back up (and restore) your Android phone (including the microSD card if present). You can also copy these backups to your PC to keep them.
For security reasons, Helium allows you to save backups directly to the cloud via Dropbox, Google Drive or Box. Please note that if you want to restore a backup stored in the cloud, you need to purchase the Helium Premium version, which costs 3.71 €. All Google accounts come with 15 GB of free cloud storage on Google Drive, which should be sufficient to back up app data.
Helium: Backup data app
Making Helium backup on Android smartphones is a simple procedure. In order to store app data you need to purchase the full version of the app. After unlocking all the features via in-app purchase, simply select the applications you want to save the data to. Then click on ” Backup ” and choose the destination.
Unless you have a microSD card inside the device, I recommend leaving ” App Data Only ” as the selected option by default. If you deselect this option, Helium will back up a copy of the application (as an apk file) along with the data. The only reason to do this type of full backup is because you want to avoid re-downloading an application from the Play Store.
Some types of applications, such as podcast players, often have large multimedia files associated with them. This means that they can take a long time to backup (and will consume more space than most other applications).
Then, select the individual applications you want to back up, or tap ” Select All ” to back up everything. Then tap ” Backup “, choose a destination and wait for the backup to complete.
The backups are stored in a folder on the device called “carbon“. I suggest you transfer this folder to your PC to keep it.
Helium: Backup on your computer
You can also back up Android directly to your PC or Mac. Tap the icon in the form of three dots at the top right and then ” PC download “. Then, on the browser of your PC, type in the address indicated and a web-based interface will be loaded that reflects what’s on Android.
When you perform a backup in this way, the browser downloads and saves a file called backup.zip, so keep it in a safe place on your computer.
Helium: restoration of a backup
To restore a previous Helium backup, scroll right into the app and look for the location where you stored the backup. You will be presented with a list of applications that you can select. You can decide whether to restore only some apps or all. When you’re ready, click on ” Restore ” to recover your backup data.
If you want to delete a specific application backup, touch and hold the app in the list until you see “Delete Backup“. Then touch OK.