Google One Phone Backups Feature Now Available for Free, New iOS App Coming Soon

Google has also added a new storage manager that gives you an easy insight on how you’re using your storage and what you can delete.

By Tasneem Akolawala | Updated: 30 July 2020 11:26 IST

Google One Phone Backups Feature Now Available for Free, New iOS App Coming Soon

Google One subscription starts from $1.99 per month

Highlights

Google offers free storage of up to 15GB for all users
The Google One iPhone app will include same features as Android
These updates are available for consumer accounts only, not business ones

Google One app will soon be available for iPhone users to back up their phone data and access Google Drive storage. The tech giant's subscription-based cloud storage model that includes Google Drive, family sharing, and subscription benefits like Google Play credits was earlier available only for Android users only. Furthermore, the ‘automatic phone backup' feature that was introduced last year for paid users has now been made free for everyone, whether they have an active subscription or not. This feature will also be available to iPhone users for free.

Google offers 15GB of free cloud storage space, and this can be used to save phone backups, alongside your photos, videos, contacts, and even calendar events. Both Android and iPhone app users will be able to back up their phones even if they don't have a Google One membership, the company announced in its latest blog post. This should make it easier to recover data if a user unknowingly breaks or loses or even upgrades their device. As mentioned above, this phone backups feature was previously only for paid users.

In addition to free phone backups, Google has also added a new storage manager that gives you insights into how you're using your storage and what you can delete. The Manage Storage page segregates data based on large files, emails with large attachments, spam emails, and more, to let you quickly select unwanted data and delete it. This new storage manager is available on the Google One app and on the web as well.

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Once the 15GB free storage cap is met with, users will have to opt for a Google One membership if they want to continue using the cloud storage facility. The membership starts at $1.99 per month (roughly Rs. 140) for 100GB of data. Membership not only comes with added storage, but additional benefits like family sharing with up to five members, live customer care from Google, and Google Play credits among other things.

Google says that the new storage manager and the free phone backups features will roll out for Android users via Google Play in the coming days. Furthermore, these updates only apply to consumer accounts and will not be available for G Suite business customers. The Google One iOS app is expected to be available soon.

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