Google One Now Offers Free Phone Backups Up To 15GB on Android and iOS (techcrunch.com) 27
Google One, Google's subscription program for buying additional storage and live support, is getting an update today that will bring free phone backups for Android and iOS devices to anybody who installs the app -- even if they don't have a paid membership. From a report: The catch: While the feature is free, the backups count against your free Google storage allowance of 15GB. If you need more you need -- you guessed it -- a Google One membership to buy more storage or delete data you no longer need. Paid memberships start at $1.99/month for 100GB. Last year, paid members already got access to this feature on Android, which stores your texts, contacts, apps, photos and videos in Google's cloud. The "free" backups are now available to Android users. iOS users will get access to it once the Google One app rolls out on iOS in the near future.
This is New? (Score:3)
I thought Google already backed up photos to your Google Photos, which took up storage from your Google Drive allocation unless you told Google to downscale the photos. I remember the pain of going through and deleting tons of stuff when my drive filled up.
Re: (Score:2)
They back up photos at "high quality" for free, if you want original quality it counts towards your allowance.
They also back up some stuff on your phone for free. Installed apps, some settings etc but not stuff like app data and other files on your phone. This now offers to back up everything.
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For photos, if you subscribe to Amazon Prime, it includes unlimited storage on Amazon Photos [amazon.com], any resolution, and a wide variety of formats [amazon.com], including many RAW formats. Included video
Re: (Score:2)
You can upload unlimited 8k video to YouTube so I guess it wouldn't make sense to limit that.
I have the unlimited free original quality deal that came with my Pixel XL. Shame it can't be transferred.
Ah Google and free backup (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is with the key... if it exists only on your rooted device, how are you going to decrypt it when you get a new / reloaded device? Oh I know. Let Google backup your keys in escrow. You can trust them!
Stalking (Score:2)
SWEET! Even more content for Google to data mine to build an even larger individualized personal profile on you. Not only on Android devices, but Apple devices now too! Leech EVERYONES data!
Google wants your data (Score:2)
Why would you give it to them? Storage you can trust is easy to find and cheap. You don't need to compromise and use Google.
Re: (Score:2)
For full-Android-phone backups? Which apps/services are reliable and trustworthy?
Paid memberships will be blocked on ios due to app (Score:2)
Paid memberships will be blocked on ios due to apples rules.
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Why, I see Google Drive and Photos with "Offers In-App Purchases" in the App Store? It's not even "like that", it's actually the very same subscription.
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You have to realize that not everyone is upset over what Apple charges.
Google may have decided that the 30/15% that Apple takes is worth it over forcing the user to subscribe through they own system - either they charge more (likely), or they realize that if the user can buy it in the app, they get way more money than making the user go through a bunch of st
Try Yandex Mail (Score:2)
I went through this process a few years ago. Eventually I found Yandex mail (ironic to have to go to a Russian website to avoid being tracked). It occasionally asks for a phone number as a "backup" in case I forget my password but so far I've been able to avoi
Re: (Score:2)
I just created an email alias with Apple Mail. It was painless and took about 1 minute. I didn't need to authenticate it because I was already signed in when I created it. I simply emailed myself at the alias to verify it was working correctly. It's the perfect solution for throw away addies, though I can also do it with Yahoo mail, but with less ease.
Re: (Score:2)
You misunderstand what they are saying. They don't want to create another email linked to their original account. They want to create a brand NEW account completely separate from any other accounts.
Already doing that for like 5-10 years (Score:3)
Google has been saving your "apps", WiFi passwords, some other passwords, contacts (that's one of the oldest things) and more things here and there for anywhere from a few years to the beginning of Android. This doesn't seem to be fundamentally different and frankly complete crap in terms of actually restoring a complete backup of your phone without having to reconfigure each and every app, from the launcher to any minor podcast app or whatever.
These backups are not encrypted. (Score:2)
There's a real push to encrypt our local storage, but "back up" our data to the cloud in a form that is available to the authorities.
Be careful out there.
I can think of two good reason not do this (Score:4, Insightful)
If it counts against the 15 GB limit (Score:2)
If I give you $15 for free, I can't later say I'll also give you a free $15 for buying groceries. Except it counts against the first $15 I gave you. I've still only given you $15.
Not free! (Score:1)
You are paying by whoring out your privacy to the data kraken. It's a vertiable equivalent to Japanese tentacle porn!
They simply can't do it (Score:1)
They have "root access" on Android but they only manage to barely run Photos (it has to be foreground etc) backup on iOS. It would be absurd if Apple allowed Google to gather users data for backing up.
A "real" backup would be Titanium Backup (commercial, needs root) or ADB backup on Android. For iOS, use iTunes or iCloud.