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Help Android Back-up

S

smurph1

Android Enthusiast
My S9 that I have had for a year for some reason does not backup my photos on a regular basis.
I am on wi-fi at home all evening and at work all day.
I accessed today (21 June), and last update was still at 12 June.
I keep googling this with no results, and keep entering the settings, but there is nothing to change or update the schedule for this!
My old phones used to do this instantly when on wi-fi!
Any advise to resolve please?
 
I'm pretty sure you haven't had an S9 for a year since the S9 only came out like 3mos ago, so I'd also like to make sure what phone do you actually have.
 
It seems to be Google photos.
Correct me if i'm wrong, but on older phones it was the android backup that handled photos, and worked well.
 
I think it's only ever been Photos that offers image backup. The "back up your app data" thing certainly didn't. Though Samsung has (or had) its own photo backup option as well, which might confuse things if your previous phone was a Samsung (I think I read something about them withdrawing that, but may have misremembered).
 
OK whatever, this is my first samsung.
Anyway, how to get google photos to update properly (on a more frequent schedule, i.e. hourly or daily)? Like several previous android phones!
 
If we're only talking photos here, open Google Photos and tap on the hamburger menu (three lines in the upper left) and go to settings>backup & sync and make sure that's turned on for your gmail account. Because it's a Samsung phone, it might not have come with Photos installed since they try to get you to use their "gallery" app to view images.
 
Yeah, Photos doesn't have any setting for backup frequency that I've seen, just what sort of network it can use to back up.

I've been doing a few experiments, and with my phone as long as Photos has been active recently it syncs immediately it connects to WiFi. Just swiping it away doesn't change this. However, when I force stopped it and then took a picture that did not upload. So just taking a picture did not restart Photos, and since my Pixel's camera app will be more tightly integrated with Photos than any other I'm sure that if that doesn't launch it on my phone it won't on any phone. After 30 minutes I looked at the image (using the little thumbnail in the camera window, which on my phone will use Photos as the image viewer) and a minute later it had uploaded.

So I suspect that the key is whether Photos ever runs on your phone. It's not going to get launched when you click on the thumbnail in the camera window, because the S9 will use the Samsung Gallery app for that. I don't know whether it ever launches automatically, or whether it just relies on your using it occasionally. If it's loaded in the background it syncs straight away, but maybe the S9's process/memory management is more aggressive than your previous phones and it's just not being run unless you open it yourself? I don't know whether excluding Photos from any battery optimisation or similar would help, but it might be worth looking at.
 
I have google photos.
Hadron - that seems like a good explanation, this is my first Samsung phone, and i use the stock gallery, as I prefer to, all HTCs before that and all worked seamlessly....likely better integration with andoid/google.
Shame as this should work as soon as in Wifi, but it doesn't, and seems to do so as and when it wants (or when google photos accessed)!
 
smurph1 said:
I have google photos.
Hadron - that seems like a good explanation, this is my first Samsung phone, and i use the stock gallery, as I prefer to, all HTCs before that and all worked seamlessly....likely better integration with andoid/google.
Shame as this should work as soon as in Wifi, but it doesn't, and seems to do so as and when it wants (or when google photos accessed)!
Click to expand...
Samsung has it's own service, mainly because it also provides that service to countries where Google is banned (i.e. China). If you have a Samsung account, it would backup to Samsung Cloud if you're using the Samsung Gallery. Use the Photos app by Google if you want to use Google Photos to do backups.
 
Well it should still back-up photos to google photos anyway, like all my other phones.
Anyway, new issue, just accessed gogole photos, and its says, "connect to power, 6 photos left", it shouldn't need power to do this back-up, and phone is at 91%!
 
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