My Mom’s Phone Is Completely Dead, But These 3 Steps Helped Me Get Everything Back

A few weeks ago my mom called me from my dad’s phone frustrated and on the verge of tears. His Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge was completely dead. No matter how many times she tried to recharge it or turn it on, it refused to come back to life. I quickly reassured her that nothing was lost. Not her conversations with family members and group messages with other retired colleagues, not photos of the only international trip she’s ever taken, and not my late grandmother’s voicemails. Not even the phone number for the grocery delivery service.

Let’s put aside the very shameful fact that I – someone who writes about phones for a living – had let my mom use a Galaxy S7 Edge until now. Instead, I’d like to focus on my genius foresight and the three very simple settings I had enabled years ago that allowed me to recoup everything for her.

My parents – like many parents I think – tend to delete important data and uninstall crucial apps out of the blue. One second all their photos are there, the next the gallery is empty and they are accusing the phone of misbehaving. Panicked calls about a vanishing weather widget or banking app are not uncommon.

And it’s not like they’re noobs or anything: my mom sometimes surprises me by doing the most unexpected corny things – she even used to type entire college chemistry exams with all the formulas and multi-level exponents and subscripts on her computer when she was still teaching. But let’s say “accidents” tend to happen more frequently on his phone than on any of mine.

That’s why, many years ago, I had enabled these three backups on his phone: WhatsApp, Google Photos, and full phone backup. This ensured that no matter what she inadvertently deleted, no matter if her phone was lost or stolen or stopped working, I could recover her most important data and restore it.

If you’re new to this and want to do the same thing on your parents’ phone – or yours, I’m not judging – here are the steps:

• For WhatsApp backups: Tap the three-dot overflow menu in the top right, then Settings > Chats > Chat Backup > Backup to Google Drive. Choose the Google account you want the backup saved to, then choose whether you want it to happen daily, weekly, or monthly. I personally don’t include videos or enable backups on cellular data because my parents’ plans are very bandwidth limited, but feel free to enable them if you wish.
• For Google Photos backups: Tap the avatar in the top right, then Photo settings > Backup & sync > Backup & sync. Enable it and choose whether it should be backed up over a data connection and the download size you prefer. The “storage saver” quality should be more than good enough: it reduces the size of the image or video without any major loss of quality or detail.
• For the entire Android phone backup: Go to Settings > System > Backup > Backup by Google One. Enable this, choose the Google Account you want to backup to, and make sure each toggle is enabled under Google account data. This ensures that contacts, calendar events, documents, emails, Keep notes, and other crucial information are also synced to the cloud.

With these three parameters, I can restore everything that my mother cares about at any time. And father, aunt and mother-in-law because I also did that on their devices.

After my mom called me, I got my Pixel 5 ready, which I was planning to upgrade over the slower Christmas period (see, I’m not a bad girl, just a lazy one). I reset him and restored everything from his account. This brought back his installed apps, his Galaxy S7 Edge’s saved Wi-Fi networks, every contact, every chat, every photo, every video, and every voicemail.

I couldn’t tell you how relieved she was to see that nothing was lost. I got a few kisses and she raved about my praises to the whole family and her network of friends. It was almost as magical as the time I recovered his unsaved 6 hours of chemistry exam prep by restoring the temporary Microsoft Word document from the folder I had set to automatically save to Google Drive. (Yes, I honed my backup and recovery skills with my parents for years because they like to challenge me like that.)

Your parents might be more tech-savvy, less prone to unintentional mistakes, or they might have other crucial apps, but let me say this: If you’re reading this article, chances are you know a phone’s settings and you’re probably better equipped to set up, explain, or verify their backup strategy. Do it. And be sure to ask what data they are interested in and that it is saved somewhere. You never know when things are going to go wrong and, as they say, prevention is better than cure.