By Shannon McCarty-Caplan

Some people lose their phones, others have had them stolen.  I just break mine.  Not from dropping it in the toilet or breaking the screen, I somehow end up with mobile “lemons.”  I’ve replaced my phone four times in my two-year mobile contract period.

My Droid X had several problems, several times.  My carrier sent me a “like new” replica each time, but I had to set-up my phone again, and again, and again.  And in that process, I sadly lost files I had been building up for months and even years.

During my last set-up, as usual, the Google Android operating system used my Gmail account to bring in all of my Google contacts, Gmail and Google calendar from the cloud onto my phone, and my server based work emails, contacts and calendar also carried over.  But I still lost all of my new contacts created over the last 2 years.  Why?

My phones were evil

My phone gave me a choice of where I want my contacts to be saved: my Google address book, my Outlook server based address book, or the phone address book (a.k.a no man’s land).  Apparently, I saved contacts to the latter, and it was the phone address book contacts I lost.  This happened even though I used my carrier’s basic contact backup to save them to the cloud.  My technical explanation for what happened to me three times: The phones were evil, malicious and trying to make my life more difficult.

I am reminded of the evil lurking every time I received a text from a seemingly unknown number/contact who turned out to be a close friend without a name. How embarrassing to ask, “Who’s this?” each and every time.

But the worst part of my two-year saga came from losing my photos and videos, ones I choose not to post to Facebook or Instagram.  I was most devastated when I lost photos and videos of my dad, who has now since passed.  Enough is enough.  There has to be a better way to preserve mobile memories and make my digital life easier to manage.

Trend Micro to the rescue!

At the same time my mobile contract became eligible for a smartphone upgrade, we launched Trend Micro™ Mobile Backup and Restore for Android tablets and smartphones (purely coincidental, I swear!).  I couldn’t wait to put the new app to the test and see if it was the solution to saving my mobile memories.

Before I received my hot new Samsung Galaxy SIII in the mail, I downloaded Mobile Backup & Restore app from Google Play on my old phone, and easily logged into my Trend Micro account (it’s also easy to create a new one if you aren’t a current customer).  This account keeps track of my free 50MB license, and provides a restore point for my data to be saved in the cloud.

The app gave me a list of files I can back up into my account including photos, videos, and my non-Google work contacts and appointments.  I especially like the option to save my text message history, which saves all old conversations with friends and colleagues.

To save battery and data charges, the app gave me the choice to only backup when on a Wi-Fi connection and/or when plugged into a power source.  I did that and watched the app work its magic, desperately hoping my files had a chance to be saved for good this time.

The first backup takes the longest, and speed depends on your network and file quantity.  It took about 20 minutes to back up my all of my contacts, calendar appointments, music, photos, videos, texts and call history (subsequent manual or automated backups take as little as a 1-3 minutes).  As I had lost many photos and videos on my last lemon of a phone, my stuff easily fell beneath the 50MB limit (an extra 5GB is $19.99 a year).

The Ultimate Test: Success!

Now for the ultimate test.  I finally received my sleek new smartphone in the mail and followed the Samsung instructions to set up my new S3. Before I get too excited about playing with my new toy, I download the Trend Micro Mobile Backup and Restore app and login to my account.  I touch the “restore” tab and with a click of a button, I transfer all of my old phone files onto my new phone.  While I wait for the download to complete, I set up the app to automatically backup every Sunday night so I don’t forget to do it manually.  After ten minutes, all of my contacts are restored with no duplication issues, and I see all of my pics and videos are loaded, too.  Success!

All of my memories are not lost.  And I can now look at my old photos, texts, and videos again, and again, and again.   Plus, if Santa gives me a Nexus 7 tablet for Christmas, or (gasp) my phone breaks again, I can easily “restore” all of my saved files to my new device.

I work for Trend Micro and the opinions expressed here are my own.

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