Today I’ve been working with a poor Samsung Galaxy S2 smartphone that had got itself in trouble. It would boot to the Samsung logo but no further, causing much anguish to it’s owner who thought he may have lost the precious photos. Luckily, flashing ClockworkMod Recovery and using Android Debug Bridge I was able to backup all data to a PC for safe keeping.

As it turned out though, his data survived a wipe/factory reset. After reflashing the firmware and setting up his Google accounts again, all his precious photos and data was still there. The guys and gals at Google deserve kudos for this design! But if he’d completely lost the phone, would all his data have been lost?

This lead me to the question – what data is actually backed up automatically to Google from your Android smartphone? A lot can be, it’s just a matter of making sure it’s switched on. Fortunately, howtogeek.com has an article explaining this with a good amount of detail. Have a read and check your own settings to make sure you’re protected.