<p><strong>Simar Singh</strong><br><br>With increasing downloads, pictures and heavier apps, mobile memory space has become like prime real estate, coveted and limited. Data received through the messaging staple, WhatsApp, undoubtedly has a big hand in clogging this space, but its new Android update is all set to remedy that.<br><br>The update allows users to back up chats, pictures and videos received via the app on cloud storage service, Google Drive.<br><br>Google Drive’s Director of Product Management, Scott Johnston, in a blog post, wrote that people did not like to have their memories stored on their phone. “WhatsApp for Android lets you create a private backup of your chat history, voice messages, photos, and videos in Google Drive. And once you do, you can restore everything on a new device with just a couple taps,” he said.<br><br>According to statistics as of November last year India had 70 million monthly active users on WhatsApp and globally, the messaging app’s CEO, Jan Koum, had announced that they had hit 800 million monthly active users in April.<br><br>For Indians, this update is good news. With rapidly increasing affordable smartphone permeation in the country, people find themselves with gadgets that allow them to use internet data-based services like WhatsApp, however, affordability often comes at the cost of memory space. For this reason, the ability to access cloud backup options will be a relief.<br><br>For some time now, iOS users have had the option to backup their WhatsApp chats and related data to Apple’s iCloud. The Android update emulates this feature by allowing users to pick the frequency of automatic backup.</p>
