Do you carry a spare phone when travelling?

Yeah there's definitely a line between sensible caution and overthinking things

If I were carrying a backup phone I'd probably leave it in a hotel room safe along with other essentials. At least then if I lost my phone while out I'd still have the backup

Having said that, my wife and I had an incident where the hotel safe ran out of battery and couldn't open (with our passports inside). That was a bit tense waiting for the security guys to open it up and wondering if we'd miss our flight 😬

So yeah, it's definitely impossible to cover everything that can go wrong

I'm slightly kicking myself for getting rid of my old phone, but the thing was pretty wrecked anyway and probably wouldn't still be functional

Maybe I'll pick up one of those cheapo phones, but I don't really want to spend a load of money on a just in case. Plus some of those budget phones can be so unusable you'd almost be better off without

Fair point, I suppose there's enough free WiFi out there to get started and can use VoIP for any phone calls that are needed

I'd personally still get a prepay SIM and maybe not load it with credit. You can generally get a free one and most networks allow you to top up without registering an account, just need the phone number

It could be handy for things that require two factor authentication where you receive a text message. Plus public WiFi can be at carrier pigeon speeds in some places, so having mobile data could be useful even if it's extortionately priced

Yeah I'd tend to carry printouts as well. It's annoying but they get around the nuisance of waiting for an app or email or load on a slow data connection

More or less you can. Google now uses a service called Google One which backs up all your phone data

Once you sign into a Google account on a new phone you can download the backup data as well as getting access to your email, contacts, apps, etc.

If you use stored passwords on android then is presumably gives access to those too. I'm a bit reluctant for Google to know everything about me (even though they already do) so I'd use a 3rd party password manager

You can also do stuff like remotely erase your old phone via the Find my Device portal

I haven't really tested it in a situation where I had to change phone quickly, so it'd be interesting to see some first hand accounts

Good point regarding 3G, although 4G has been fairly standard in phones for a while now

Biggest issue might be calling as I think you need a data connection for VoLTE calls, which can be hard to enable if your SIM isn't activated

I'm kinda in a similar mindset that I like to have backups for most of the essentials (ID, money, tickets, etc)

I don't have a laptop or tablet to bring however, plus a lot of online banking won't let you login without a phone anyway

I've debated bringing my work laptop a couple of times, mostly in case some travel disaster means I can't get home on time. But my work is fairly easygoing if I need to take extra days, and they have some annoying laptop travel policies, so it's easier to just leave it behind

I think the drive backup is Google One, although I wouldn't be surprised if it's changed names again

Tbh a lot of the Google service offering is a mess these days, but once you have signed into a new phone then you've got most of the essentials available

They do have a phone transfer system which basically copies everything to a new phone, but you need the old phone for it AFAIK since they basically do a peer to peer transfer. Not as useful if your old phone is at the bottom of the Seine or being sold to the nearest CeX for cash

I guess one issue is you only know how well these systems work by trying them out. If you have a spare phone around it might be worth giving it a test run to see how well it works