While each brand of mobile phone has specific protocols for how to create a reliable backup, there are some general steps that each one of them follows.

The first step is to connect your phone to your computer with a USB cord. Shortly thereafter, a small summary window should pop up on your computer screen giving you a couple of choices of things you can do. It usually allows you to create a backup file for your phone’s contents, store pictures or videos in various other programs, open files, browse files, or other things.

For IPhones

For an iPhone, it is possible to use the iCloud system to create a backup. This is an Apple product, of course, and a small amount of storage is free, although additional storage costs money. You can set this service to perform regular backups, or start them manually if you wish. You can also use your computer to back up your phone through iTunes. A mixed approach can also work well, but requires more forethought on your part.

For Android Phones

Backing up an Android phone is usually done using Google Sync. This is a very complete backup, allowing your phone to literally sync with every Google program you use. Many people find this approach too invasive, however, and prefer to control their backup process a little more tightly by hooking the phone up to their computer and manually selecting what data to transfer onto the computer.

Model Specific Solutions

In the end, there are many options for creating backups for your phone. There will be suggestions for your particular model of phone in your user manual (which you did read, didn’t you?) and instructions for creating basic backups can be obtained online in many places. A few minutes’ research will give you the tools you need to select a backup plan and schedule that will work for you.