The Carbon backup app launched a short while back. The app launched in beta and as of today has graduated to beta 3. Of course, perhaps more exciting for some, the release of Carbon beta 3 arrived with word of a non-beta release. A specific date has yet to be revealed, however Carbon should be available in the Google Play Store before the end of the month.

Similar to the release of Carbon beta 1, beta 3 has arrived with an expiration date. The app will stop working on January 30. The good news here, the developer noted that he plans to to have the Google Play release available before then. As we had heard before, Carbon will be available for free and in a premium version.

Users will not need to have a rooted phone to use Carbon, which is actually one of the nicer perks. Some of the new features for non-root users include performance enhancements, bug fixes, the ability to cancel a backup and/or restore process and having the backup and/or restore process show up in the notification area. Other goodies include include the ability to backup or restore to a Box.net account. Of course, as per the original beta release, you can also use a Google Drive or Dropbox account as well as an SD card.

The catch and main difference between running Carbon as a rooted user or a non-rooted user — those without root will need to use Carbon in conjunction with a desktop app. Carbon has a Windows app already available and there was also promise of support for Mac and Linux. Specifically, a Mac app will be released and Linux users can expect a script. Bottom line here, assuming we don’t see any large bugs in beta 3, it looks like a non-beta release should be available before the end of January.

[via Google+]