Image Courtesy: TechRadar
Try moving from an iPhone back to an Android phone and you would realize that the shift is not all that easy if you want to move data from all your apps. Google is now launching the iOS version of the Android Google One app that would allow users the phone backup feature for free, irrespective of whether you have a subscription or not.
It was only a year ago that Google had added the automatic Android phone backup feature to Google One, the company’s membership program that allows users to enhance storage from 100 GB to a massive 2TB for prices ranging from Rs.130 a month to Rs.650 per month. Under the program, Google One allowed family sharing, data back-up and other perks.
Google offered all the features on Android smartphones and now by extending it to iPhones, it has ensured that the phone backup feature is available for free to the iOS ecosystem, thus ensuring that those who aren’t paying for Google One too can backup their devices, thus keeping the data secure.
Enumerating the features, Google said in a blog post that from now, automatic phone backup would be available on Android phones and iPhones without a Google One membership where users can backup photos, videos, contacts, and calendar events with Google.
This way, iPhone users who plan to shift to the Android ecosystem would have it easier as they can simply change the device, connect to Google One and download all the data that they had ever carried on their Apple devices. Those without subscriptions would have their base 15GB storage split between Gmail, Drive, Photos and phone backups now.
Of course, this would mean that users need to have less of data from their photos, gmail and drive so that the important stuff on their phone gets completely backed up in the limited space available via the Google One app, scheduled to launch ‘soon’ on the App Store and ‘in the coming days’ for Android users on Play Store.
One wonders whether iPhone fans would really care for this bit of information, given that they have had backup options for most of what Google is now offering. Of course, one gets only a meagre 5GB of free storage on iCloud, but that’s enough to take care of one’s contacts and some photos, though definitely not the videos.
From an Android perspective, this is something Google One should have started with, given the challenges that iPhone users faced when shifting to Android. Believe me, when I say that with the arrival of flagships like the OnePlus 8, Apple fan clubs are thinning as is evident from the recent numbers that market research showed.
The new Google One app for iOS comes with a storage manager that should make it far easier to clean up data that might be consuming phone storage. While this is available on the web, it makes sense to have it on the phones these days, given that most users spend most of their waking hours on the hand-held device.
