Don't upgrade your Google plan yet! You may be using up way more storage than necessary. On Android, the default cloud backup option integrates device backups with your Google account storage. The amount of storage you have access to is small by default — just 15GB for free users — and is metered across all Google products. Your phone's backup now counts against your account-wide storage.

You might not realize you've got redundant cloud backups. For instance, WhatsApp backs up to Google Drive, and Google Photos may also back up your WhatsApp folder. That means you're letting those photos and videos get backed up in two separate locations, both counting against your Google storage limits. Delete the excess media before it's even backed up, and you've immediately saved double the space.

You can save even more space by paring back the number of apps backing up from your phone. Backup settings can be accessed from the Google section of Android settings. You may be shocked to find out how many apps have determined it necessary to chew into your cloud storage. Even if these apps are just backing up a couple megabytes of configuration data, I'd rather set them up fresh on a new device.