Phone back up and iCloud back up issues

When you are using iCloud Photos, your phone does not include photos and videos in iCloud backups. The idea is that iCloud Photos itself is the backup.

Think of your iCloud "storage room" on Apple's servers as having three areas:

• One for iCloud backups
• One for files on iCloud Drive
• One for data synchronized through iCloud – such as photos and videos in iCloud Photos.

If you are using iCloud Photos, your phone won't store copies of your photos and videos in iCloud backups – in the first area. It will store copies of them in iCloud Photos – in the third area. If something happens to your phone, and you have to erase it or replace it, the way that you get photos and videos back is to turn on iCloud Photos again.

I much prefer using iCloud Photos to including photos and videos in iCloud backups. Here's why:

• You're going to be storing photos and videos in iCloud either way.
• If they are in iCloud Photos, you can easily share them between multiple devices (e.g., an iPhone and a Mac).
• If they are in iCloud Photos, you can see and download them from just about any computer with a Web browser, by logging into the iCloud Web interface (https://www.icloud.com/). Your phone might be lying dead & mangled in the middle of the street after having been run over by a construction truck – and you will still be able to check on your photos. With iCloud backups, the only way to see what is in a backup is to restore the whole thing to a phone, thus wiping out whatever was on that phone before.
• If your photos and videos are in iCloud Photos, I presume that makes nightly iCloud backups go faster.

To make a long story short, if you were using iCloud Photos, log into the iCloud Web interface:

https://www.icloud.com/

If you see your photos and videos there, that should help to put your mind at ease.