• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Backup & procedure for non rooted phones

Pep

Pep

Android Enthusiast
Hi all.
I haven't bothered rooting a phone since my Note 3.
Not enough benefits anymore.
But I really do miss being able to do a full proper backup like Titanium Backup.
Is there really still nothing available for non-rooted phone that will do that sort of back up?
Like when you restore you are logged into all you apps.
Games are at the same point.
All setting are there......

What is you backup and restore procedure?

Thanks Pep
 
I've certainly never heard of any kind of backup mechanism that's quite so extensive. I think if there were such a thing that it'd have been written up in one of the Android magazines - Android Central or Android Authority...
 
There is a non-root backup app called Helium (formerly Carbon), but I don't know that it's as exhaustive as a nandroid backup. As I rightly predicted 4 years ago, rooting has become increasingly difficult and increasingly unnecessary... in many ways, the disadvantages now outweigh the benefits. SMS Backup and Restore does a good job backing up texts and call log... and the big manufacturers have apps for migrating old phone contents to a new device. Newer Android versions allow Google to back up apps and data - but it's not at the point that everything is logged in and as it was. Maybe Android 9? Who knows...
 
Last edited:
Some manufacturers do provide a full and complete backup and restore for their phones, like Samsung Smart Switch for Galaxy phones and tablets. And Oppo and Vivo does as well, which is what I use on my R9 Plus. Other brands, I don't know.

Nandroid basically makes a dump or snapshot of the device's entire NAND flash storage, which is why root and a custom recovery is required for it.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Pep
The Carbon backup app was renamed Helium (due to some copyright issue I think) but still exists. It works well enough without root, though you need a computer to authorise some priviledges. I used it for transferring stuff from my (rooted) HTC One to my (non-rooted) Pixel 2 when Google's transfer tool failed and their cloud backup of app data didn't load very much onto the new device. It got most things, but there were some apps which didn't allow it to back up their data (whereas Titanium gets almost everything). To be honest if I do root the Pixel Titanium would be the main reason - it is still better than any of the non-root solutions.

Right now my backup procedure is that I largely trust Google for app data (I mean to take Carbon backups, but haven't time at the moment), have photos automatically backing-up to the cloud, take my own backups of messages, have contacts synced (but also have an exported .vcf of them on another device), and all of my media I have elsewhere anyway (I copy stuff to the phone rather than download onto it). Definitely not as robust as when I'd take a Titanium backup every few weeks and copy the folder to my computer, but I could get everything genuinely important back if anything happened to the phone.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Pep
That works great, unless it's a Verizon phone. Big Stinkin' Red crippled Samsung Backup & Restore in order to push their own stupid Verizon Cloud. I refuse to use it out of principle.
 
El Presidente said:
What phone do you have? I've found the Samsung backup and restore (smart switch) pretty good. It even syncs the data to your Samsung cloud account.
Click to expand...

Samsung S7E (after the whole N7 debacle) going to the Note 8 (still a Note Fan Boy. A few firery N7s ain't gonna scare me away!)

I'll do my usual back ups and so on, and give Samsung Smart Switch a go

Thanks Pep
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom