Many mobile phone users rely on the automatic backup feature of their devices. On Android, users can back up images and videos, settings, the call history or SMS.
Not all of the backed up data counted against the storage quota of the user, which is 15 GB by default for free Google account users.
While Google has been pushing users towards backing up photos and videos online, likely also to get them close to the free limit and push paid storage, it has discounted some data up until now.
This changes in less than two months. Google is emailing Android users currently about the upcoming change to Android’s backup storage policy.
The main change: All data counts against a user’s storage quota. Google says this includes things such as SMS messages, the call history or device settings.
The email reveals the extra storage requirements for the particular user, which was 0.07 GB in my case and should be around 40 MB on average. It seems unlikely that this will drive the quote of the majority users across the treshold.
Google is also extending the backup capabilities. When you open the back up other data section in the preferences, which Google says is rolling out, you find options to turn off backups for device data or app data. Each entry is listed with the storage it occupies on the device currently, making it easy to find the largest sections. However, there is no option to sort by data, which can make browsing the app data section time consuming.
I currently have 2 Andriod devices with the free 15 GB. I have use 1.55GB. I make both device backups weekly along with manual backups of 2 seperate digital libraries. 1 of epub books and 1 photos. I manually add every new epub book to the epub backup. The photos I do the samething after editing and deciding which new photos I want to keep, My current epub library is 514 epub books, and 2334 photos. I have been doing this for over12 years.