As Android phones become more powerful and more useful, they also store more of your important personal data. Losing that data can be more than a minor inconvenience, and given the fragility of electronic devices, it's something that's likely to happen at some point. MyBackup Pro is an app that will give you peace of mind if your phone gets destroyed in a mishap such as an impromptu dip in the toilet or a shattering drop to the pavement. You can schedule automatic backups and restore your apps, data, and settings to a new phone (or to the same phone if the data was accidentally erased) in just minutes. Considering how much time it would take to manually enter such data, this app is a worthwhile purchase at the current price of $5.
Unlike some other apps like WaveSecure or ASTRO File Manager that feature limited backup capability, MyBackup Pro can back up non-Market apps as well as your personalized home screen with all its shortcuts. It may seem like a small thing, but small things add up.
To use the cloud backup feature, you will need to register an account in-app or online at http://www.rerware.com. Make sure you choose a secure password you can remember, because you will need it to restore your cloud-based backups. You might also want to write down your PIN, although you can have it e-mailed to you if you forget it.
MyBackup Pro comes with 50MB of free cloud storage, which you can upgrade to 250MB for $1 per month or 1GB for $2 per month. In my testing I found that backing up all my installed apps required over 100MB of storage. If you decide to back up photos, you could quickly exhaust the 250MB storage subscription, so the 1GB option would probably be the most realistic one for full backups to the cloud.
You can create multiple versions of backups -- up to 30 in the cloud and unlimited versions on your SD card.
So what can you back up? You can back up one, several, or all of your apps. You can back up any part or all of your call log, and your photos, contacts, bookmarks, SMS, MMS, system settings, home screens, alarms, dictionary, calendar events, and music playlists.
You can restore selected data from backups, or the entire backup. If you are backed up to the cloud, you can also view your contacts, bookmarks, SMS, call log, alarms, dictionary, and calendar events in the MyBackup Web Viewer.
This is a great app that performs an important function that is unfortunately absent in the core Android OS. The only feature I would add would be remote backup and wipe capability so you could secure your device in case of loss or theft. Other than that, MyBackup Pro is just about perfect. If you want to try it out before you purchase it, a 30-day free trial version is also available.
What app do you use to backup your important data? Contact Brent W. Hopkins on Facebook or on Twitter.
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