Automatic Phone Backup Comes to Google One

Google has announced that all Google One subscribers will now get automatic phone backup of photos, videos, and MMS.

“Automatic phone backup for Android is now included in your Google One membership,” Google’s Larissa Fontaine announced. “So the next time you break, lose or switch your phone, you won’t lose your photos, videos, contacts, and messages—basically, everything that’s important to you.”

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According to Google, the Google One-based automatic phone backup functionality is a superset of what it provides in Android for free. So in addition to texts, contacts, and apps backup, Google One backup includes original quality photos, videos, and multimedia messages (MMS). (Technically, original quality photo backup has been available via Google Photos for quite some time, too.)

Google introduced Google One last May and started rolling out the service that August. The service provides tiered cloud storage plans for Google account holders with prices starting at $19.99 per year for 100 GB of storage. Google One offers 200 GB ($2.99/month or $29.99/year), 2 TB ($9.99/month or $99.99/year),  10 TB ($99.99/month), 20 TB ($199.99/month), and 30 TB ($299.99/month) plans too.

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Conversation 7 comments

  • dcdevito

    14 September, 2019 - 5:26 pm

    <p>Typical Google makes it confusing with One. Nobody knows what the heck Google One even is. </p>

    • dashrender

      Premium Member
      16 September, 2019 - 2:08 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#466075">In reply to dcdevito:</a></em></blockquote><p>Agreed – Apparently my account was upgraded to it automatically due to an old phone? no clue – I know I'm not paying Google anything for storage, yet I have 100 GB available.</p><p><br></p>

  • RobertJasiek

    15 September, 2019 - 1:23 am

    <p>This sounds like the same nonsense as on iOS: a file / backup management of only mainstream file types instead of all file types.</p>

  • minke

    15 September, 2019 - 8:04 am

    <p>I already get everything backed up for free using Gmail, Google Photos and Android, except MMS I guess. Though I am not certain, it sounds like photos backed up via Google One will count against your storage, unlike using ordinary Google Photos at "High Quality." This seems to be a way to get people paying for backups they may not actually need.</p>

  • m_p_w_84

    15 September, 2019 - 2:44 pm

    <p>is it true (not that it especially matters to me) that backing up your messages means the government gets easy access to them, via warrant of course </p>

  • Bibbit

    16 September, 2019 - 3:07 pm

    <p>What if you use a non-Google app for MMS? Still going to get MMS backup?</p>

  • bassoprofundo

    Premium Member
    16 September, 2019 - 5:12 pm

    <p>Any idea how this squares with existing backups for things like Google Photos? For instance, for someone like me that already backs up at original quality, am I going to have both those backups <em>and</em> any done via Google One eating into my space allotment? I haven't seen an explanation as to how they work together yet.</p>

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