WhatsApp tends to like to have feature parity all around, so we would expect the backup option to hit iOS. That’s because WhatsApp for Android now plays nice with Google Drive, letting you create a private online backup of all your data from the Facebook-owned chat service. And once you do, you can restore everything on a new device with a few taps. Google Drive offers them a native, seamless and safe way to back up their multimedia in the cloud, with added security thanks to encryption. They’ll also be able to set a frequency for automatic backups (daily, weekly, monthly, etc), and whether or not to include videos in the backup.
Advertisement
Using WhatsApp you can only keep in touch with your friends if they also have WhatsApp installed on their iPhones.
Users will need a valid Google account but given this is for Android, you should already have one setup.
Advertisement
After that, you can choose to manually force an upload of your chats and media, which may take a couple of hours, depending on the size of your backup and the speed of your internet connection. For people who are concerned about Google’s collection of users’ data, the company has said that it doesn’t use people’s data stored in Drive to serve and personalize ads. According to Google, this update is expected to roll out to users over the course of the next few months so if you don’t see it now, don’t worry because eventually it will make its way onto your device. And in Android 6.0 Marshmallow, Google has a new auto backup feature that apps can utilize. This new feature has been added on iOS in version 2.12.7, while Android, Windows Phone and other users might have to wait a little longer.
