In terms of portability, graphics, and sheer computing power, Android phones make for great little game consoles. It’s a shame, then, that game save data is often so hard to find, back up, sync, and transfer from one device to the next.

Phones Don’t Treat Save Data Like Consoles Do

Dedicated game consoles have a way to preserve save data separate from the game itself. This has been an option since the rise of the memory card on the original PlayStation and Nintendo 64. It has long been the norm on PCs. Sadly, this is not the state of affairs on Android phones and tablets.

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I love mobile gaming, but I’m not a fan of the reality that I often have to keep a game installed if I want to keep my progress. Uninstalling the game will also delete my save game files.

My data is also locked to my device. Most games don’t have an obvious way to transfer save data from one phone to the next, or from a phone to a tablet. Unlike a Nintendo Switch, even if your phone does have a microSD card slot, you can’t just transfer your game saves to a memory card.

It’s Unclear Where Game Data Is Saved

Most PC gamers get their games through Steam, which automatically backs up save data online and syncs it between devices. Yet even without Steam, you can often search to find where game data is saved on your local hard drive and manually back up those files.

This is sometimes true on Android, but not most of the time. I’ve occasionally had success searching through the Android > Data folders located in internal storage, but not most of the time, and these folders are increasingly difficult to access. My Galaxy Z Fold 6 tells me to plug my phone into a PC to access these files, which is difficult when my phone is my PC.

This inconsistency makes it difficult for third-party apps to work reliably. Many promise to back up app and game save data, but your mileage may vary, especially if you aren’t willing or able to root your device for access to the files.

I regularly back up my phone directly to an external SSD. I would love to be able to simply back up my game saves as well every time I do.

Google Play Games Doesn’t Always Sync Data

Google Play Games offers a solution. Games that support cloud syncing through Google Play Games will save your progress online and retrieve it on any device you’re signed in to, much like Steam or Xbox.

Unfortunately, seeing the Google Play Games pop-up may give you a false sense of security. It’s up to game developers to integrate cloud syncing, and sometimes they don’t. It’s more common to see games use your Google Play Games login just to track achievements.

Personally, I have never cared about achievements on any platform and forget they exist. I just want to back up my saves. Were it not for that feature, I would add Google Play Games to the list of Google bloatware I uninstall from all of my Android phones.

I want Google Play Games to be as ubiquitous and reliable as Steam is for PCs. My PC game save data is so reliably preserved that I can continue gaming even though I no longer have a PC to game on. I instead stream PC titles through my phone or TV using NVIDIA GeForce NOW. My saves are accessed from one cloud service using another, and if I do get another gaming PC someday, I’ll be able to pick back up without missing a beat.

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Some of the games I stream I own through the Xbox store, and their saves are saved to my Xbox account. If I were to buy a PC or even an Xbox console, I could continue where I left off.

In other words, backing up game data is a solved problem elsewhere. Why is it such a hot mess on Android?

Juggling Separate Sign-Ins for Each Game

Many games now require their own account, especially major cross-platform titles like Genshin Impact and Infinity Nikki. It’s almost a given when downloading a multiplayer title, where this requirement makes sense. But for single-player titles? This still feels jarring to me. I already have to juggle enough accounts outside of gaming. I really don’t want to generate dozens more.

To make matters worse, the presence of an account still doesn’t guarantee that your data is safe. I recently took a break from Ex Astris, a massive mobile game that requires over 4GB of storage space. This is a game I cherish for changing my perspective on what a mobile-exclusive title can be.

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When I decided to reinstall the game and dip my toes back in, signing in to my old account didn’t restore my saves. I didn’t realize I had been saving only to my device and not to the cloud! Is that my fault? Perhaps, but it’s the sort of thing I don’t have to think about with other forms of gaming. Again, uninstalling a game elsewhere doesn’t result in deleting my save data, even if only saved locally—and why else was I required to create an account if not to save my files online?

Now, I don’t particularly have the desire to replay the first five or ten hours of this lengthy JRPG, so I probably won’t. It’s a shame, too, because this mobile-exclusive is every bit as fleshed out as a game made for PCs or consoles.

I’ve only played Coromon on my phone, yet that’s one game whose data I know is safe. That’s because despite being a mobile title, it has the option to sign in to my Stream account.

As much as I don’t like a monopoly, I’d accept Stream as the solution to syncing game data on Android. Now that Android has the Epic Game Store, maybe Epic will offer a solution. Someone, please, take this seriously. There are only so many times I can start a game over before I’m just over it.