You can backup essential data from your Android phone to Google Drive. It’s a built-in feature of the Android OS. The feature has been there for a long time and usually backs up things like your contacts, Gmail messages, WiFi passwords, Messages sent over Hangouts, and other things. Up until Android Oreo, the list of backed up items did not include the call log and SMS. Some phones, specifically the Pixel phones have had SMS and call log back up long before Oreo but you can now back up call log and SMS on any Android phone running Oreo.
The back up setting has been integrated with Google Drive back up and like all other items that can be backed up, you have the option to enable or disable it, selectively.
This really is as simple as enabling Google Drive back up. The only essential thing is that you have Android Oreo on your phone.
Open the Settings app and go to System>Backup. If you haven’t enabled it already, enable it, select an account, and then select what you want to back up.
If you don’t want to back up everything on your device to Google Drive, you can disable it from the Backup screen or, if you prefer not to back up call log and SMS data, you can turn it off.
We should mention that while this is an Android Oreo feature, some users running Android Oreo are not seeing it. We’ve been able to verify that the feature appears on Pixel phones, the Nexus 6P and Nokia 3 and Nokia 5, all running Android Oreo. Users running Android Oreo on the Nexus 5X report the feature missing and the cause so far is unknown. Perhaps it’s to do with which Oreo update they’re running. The Pixel phones, the Nexus 6P, and the Nokia sets all get Oreo updates almost immediately after they come out.
If you’ve installed Oreo on your phone by flashing a custom ROM, it’s possible you won’t see this feature. It’s also possible that your device manufacturer has removed this feature. This is to be expected if you have a phone with heavily modified Android Oreo and lots of junk apps from your device manufacturer.
The call log and SMS information cannot be download via Google Takeout. It can be imported to another Android device but there is no way to save a copy of it to your desktop, at least not in a directly accessibly format. MMS are not backed up.
