One of the biggest things that can trip us up with our smartphones is making sure our photos are properly backed up.

On the iPhone, all photos can get backed up to the user’s iCloud account for transfer to the computer and photo restoration in case of disaster.

Of course there are 3rd party apps like Microsoft’s One Drive (for iPhone and Android) which are also excellent.

However, I think nothing beats a photo backup app from the company making the software for your phone. Android users have been left out in the cold for a few years. Google used to offer a photo backup service called Picasa Web, but they phased that out in favor of Google Plus. Google Plus did a fine job of photo backup but required you to join the Google Plus social network. It was possible to turn off the social aspects of the service and just use the photo backup, but it was one extra step. Android and Google users in general have complained for about two years.

Google has finally released the Google Photos app for Android. I would encourage you to download this from the Google Play store immediately (free) and allow it to back up all of your photos by default. You can then access all of those photos from your computer at https://photos.google.com/ Be sure to tweak privacy settings to make all of your photos and albums exactly how you like them.

There is one more piece of good news. Google Photos is offering unlimited storage for your photos.

While there are certainly more sophisticated options, Google Photos is sure to be the easiest way to back up photos AUTOMATICALLY from your Android device.