Use Samsung or Google account for automatic backup?

Question

On my Samsung Galaxy S7 with Android 8.0 I'm logged into both a Samsung account and a Google account. Both of these offer cloud backup and data synchronisation of settings and documents, but I'm unsure which I should use, because it's not clear to me what each does exactly.

What I'm looking for is an automatic backup of settings, contacts, messages, downloaded files, photographs, ... in case my phone is stolen or lost or I have to do a reset for some reason.

This doesn't have to be done immediately; I'd be ok with data being uploaded once a day, or even every couple of days for things like photographs.

At the moment it seems that both the Samsung and Google account have some degree of backup/syncing switched on, but they're probably doing the same thing twice, and they may get in each other's way if I ever want to restore data.

Since I'm already using a lot of Google services (Gmail, Calendar...) it seems a logical choice to go with the Google account, but I don't want to completely disable the Samsung account, because I want to keep the "Where's My Phone?" functionality.

So, what would be the best way to set up automatic backups, and how do I avoid the Google and Samsung backup functionality doing duplicate work or getting in each othere's way?

Answer 1

If you are going to switch phones to another Samsung brand in the future, use the Samsung backup.

If you switch to a different android phone manufacturer, then use Google backup.

However, there is no reason not to use both. All of the Google service stuff, to my knowledge, does not backup with Samsung, and vice-versa.

As for restoring apps and data, I do not think they will collide.

You could also change what each is backing up. Say for instance, let Google save off the Apps and other google service things, and let Samsung do the rest.