Moving to a new phone this Christmas: how to back up and transfer your photos safely
Thousands of family photos live only on a phone until something goes wrong. If a new handset is on the list this year, the move is the ideal moment to set up a backup you can trust.
Before you hand over, trade in or reset an old phone, check that every photo and video is stored somewhere else, and ideally in two places. For most people that means a cloud service that syncs automatically, plus an occasional copy on a computer or external drive. Then confirm the photos are visible on the new phone or on the web before you wipe the old one. That last check is the one people skip.
Syncing is not the same as backing up
Apple's own explanation of what iCloud Backup includes draws a distinction worth understanding. Some things, including iCloud Photos, sync continuously: the same library appears on all your devices. iCloud Backup is a periodic snapshot of the information on your device that is not already synced. Apple says photos and videos are only included in an iCloud Backup when iCloud Photos is turned off.
In practice that means one of two set-ups on an iPhone. Either iCloud Photos is on, and your library lives in iCloud and appears on the new phone when you sign in, or it is off, and your photos travel inside the device backup. Check which applies to you in Settings before you start.
Syncing has one catch. Delete a photo on one device and it goes from all of them, after a grace period in the recently deleted album. A sync is protection against losing a phone, not against deleting the wrong album.
Google Photos on Android, and on iPhone
Google's help page on backing up photos explains the steps: open the Google Photos app, tap your profile picture, go to Photos settings, then Backup, and switch it on. You can also choose extra folders on the device to include, which matters for pictures saved from messaging apps and screenshots. At the top of the library, the app shows “Backup complete” once everything has uploaded.
The page also notes size limits: photos up to 200MB or 200 megapixels, and videos up to 10GB. Most phone files sit well inside that, but long 4K videos from a school concert can approach it.
Storage and quality settings
Every Google Account includes up to 15GB of storage, shared across Google Photos, Gmail and Google Drive, according to Google's page on backup quality. All backup quality options now count towards that figure. The three settings are:
- Original quality, which keeps files at full resolution. Google recommends it for photos over 16 megapixels, videos above 1080p and anything you may print large.
- Storage saver, which resizes photos above 16 megapixels to 16 megapixels and videos above 1080p to 1080p.
- Express, which shrinks photos to 3 megapixels and video to 480p, and may not be available everywhere.
For irreplaceable pictures, original quality is the safer choice, even if it means paying for more storage. If you stay on a reduced setting, make sure full-resolution copies exist somewhere else as well.
Running the move, step by step
- Clear space and tidy first. Deleting obvious duplicates, blurred shots and screenshots you no longer need makes every backup faster.
- Check the backup has finished. Look for the completion message in your photo app, and leave the phone on Wi-Fi and charging overnight if it has a lot to upload.
- Make a second copy. Download the library, or at least the most precious albums, to a computer or external drive.
- Set up the new phone. Sign in with the same account and let photos appear. Open a few from years ago, not just last week, to be sure the full library is there.
- Only then reset the old phone. Sign out of your accounts and use the factory reset option before trading it in or passing it on.
The photos that slip through
Some pictures live outside the main camera roll and are easy to miss. Images received in messaging apps may be stored in separate folders or within the app itself, depending on the app and your settings. Edited versions from third-party apps sometimes save only to that app's folder. Photos taken in a phone's secure or hidden folder may be excluded from backup. Check each of these before you reset.
If you edit on your phone, the edit order in our Snapseed walkthrough saves a new copy rather than overwriting the original, which is a good habit when you care about the source file.
A simple long-term routine
A widely used rule of thumb among photographers is to keep three copies of anything important, on two different kinds of storage, with one away from home. For a family, that can be as simple as cloud sync on the phone, a twice-yearly copy to an external drive kept in a drawer, and a second drive left with a relative. The point is that no single failure, theft or mistaken deletion takes everything.
A new year is a good moment to start. Pick a date that is easy to remember, such as the first weekend of January and July, and make the copy then.
A note on privacy
Before passing a phone on to a child or selling it, the factory reset is what protects your pictures, messages and accounts. Removing the SIM and memory card, where there is one, and signing out of cloud accounts first prevents the device being locked to you. If you are unsure how to reset a particular model, the manufacturer's support pages explain it step by step. And if you want the new phone to take better pictures than the old one, start with our smartphone photo tips.