Google is releasing a free phone backup tool for iOS

As part of its Google One subscription service, Android users have been able to take advantage of a phone backup tool baked right into the mobile operating system. But now Google is looking to expand.

On Wednesday, Google officially announced it is bringing its phone backup tool beyond Google One, making it a free tool for not only Android users, but also iPhone owners as well. This is how it works: Google offers a standard 15GB of storage, and free users (the ones who aren’t subscribing to Google One) will see that storage distributed between Google’s Gmail, Photos, and Drive. And now it will also include the available phone backup as well.

Google is going to launch a new, dedicated Google One app to manage all of this, but, again, you won’t need to subscribe to anything to backup your phone for free. The backup tool will automatically back up things like calendar events, photos, videos, and your contact list. It will all be accessible via your Google account.

Automatic phone backup will be available on Android phones, even if you don’t have a Google One membership. And if you have an iPhone, we’re introducing a new iOS app that lets you store photos, videos, contacts, and calendar events with Google. Start backing up your phone with the Google One app, and save the stuff you care about using the free 15 GB of storage that comes with your Google Account. If you break, lose, or upgrade your phone, you can rest easy knowing that your data is safe in the cloud.

Of course, if the base 15GB of storage isn’t enough, you can choose to fork over some cash on a regular basis to get access to more. For just $2 per month will get you upgraded to 100GB of storage, for instance. As a comparison, Apple’s base cloud storage option offers just 5GB of storage.

According to Google, the new Google One app will be available soon, and Android users can expect to see these changes “in the coming days”. Meanwhile, iOS users will have to wait a bit longer, with Google saying the new phone backup tool, and the app, will be “available soon”.

Do you think you’ll take advantage of this new tool?