Hi

If you use your google account as its designed to be used (you dont have to) then most things are backed up:

Contacts - google account - save contacts as google contacts (rather than phone contacts or on SIM). They are then backed up to google and are not lost should you lose your phone.

photos - set to back up to G+ which is linked to your google account (or you could use dropbox)

data files - save to "drive" which comes with your google account 15Gb free.

music - save to "play music" - you can upload a lot of your own music to here as well as buying
more. The paid version gives unlimited access.

Texts/SMS - google does not back these up automatically. This is the one thing you really need a backup app for (such as mybackup pro). There are many apps that will do this available in the playstore (googles version of the appstore)

As with everything in android, there are many ways to do the same thing - lots and lots of choice - but if you stick with google initially, its a good start and you can then refine how you acheive what you want later.

If you use the google services, its all available on any device with a browser so long as you know your login details.

Hope this helps

Roger

 

Verizon Message+ syncs your messages across devices. It's available for iphone and android, so that will back up your messages.

 

don't rely on google to back up and restore all your apps as for some reason it doesn't. Does most, not all.

I've used Mybackuppro from android to android but seems you can't save the backup to Drive. It also backs up the entire app rather than just the title/apk allowing it to be reinstalled from Play.