Our smartphones have become an integral part of our lives.  They are so entwined into our everyday lives/ and for many the only form of communication to others with the exception of person to person meetings.

So what happens when something happens to our smartphone?    If you’re prepared properly; nothing! If not you could be in a heap of _____!

First we must recognize that all things have the potential to fail, it’s not if, but when.  Given that fact the first priority in making sure we have a backup in place.  The first backup will be a digital version and we will look at the backup options available and their pluses and minuses.  The second backup will be paper-based.

There are two primary digital backups available; one is to the cloud and another to a local memory card.  Both are good and combined can provide a respectable level of safety.

The benefits of cloud based versions offer is the ability to restore your data and settings in the event your smartphone is physically damaged beyond repair or stolen.  The disadvantage is if something happens to the data on your phone and you can’t get a good signal or you have a lot of data which requires substantial time to download, you could have a problem.

Backups stored to local memory cards are fast for recovery and don’t use any bandwidth, making them the first line of defense in the event of a hardware or software crash, or data corruption.  The downside to backups stored locally is if you lose your phone or it gets stolen, you are up the creek without a paddle!

There are many Android based backup applications in Google Play and in the Amazon Appstore.  Google also offers a sync service and Verizon has a backup assistant.