Why do people care about phone backups anymore? I don't think I have any apps that don't store everything in the cloud. There's nothing of value that's only on my phone. I could toss it in the bin and set up a new one now and not lose anything.
What do you think is special about a phone backup compared to a backup of anything else?
I said don't have the primary store of your content to be on your phone and don't backup your phone.
The reason for this is that if you lose your phone, everything is lost since you last backed up.
Instead, store have the primary store of your content to be in the cloud and backup your cloud.
The reason for this is that if you lose your phone, it's irrelevant, just get a new phone and re-install your cloud apps. Now you don't need to worry about backing up your phone ever.
The only failure mode is if your phone has not had a signal to upload new content to the cloud in the last few minutes. Well guess what you probably also haven't backed up your phone in that time either if that's what you were doing.
See?
I'm saying that my phone becomes the synced copy. The cloud is the canonical version (backed up separately elsewhere) and my phone becomes a device I can lose or break and not worry about anything so I don't need to back it up. As soon as I create any content on my phone I upload it to the cloud.
Take my phone from my hand at any moment and as long as I've had signal in the last few minutes I've lost nothing.