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Help Best Backup and Restore Method

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pharla

Newbie
Apologies if this has been answered before, but been browsing for ages and using the search function and can't find a suitable answer.

I will say that despite despising Apple and changing as soon as I possibly could, what I am wanting to do was extremely easy on my iphone!

Simple really. Updated JB a short time ago to 4.1.2 and there are some niggles. Recommendation is to do a factory reset, after backing up.

On top of that, I have a firmware update reminder keep appearing and I keep stalling it until I am a bit more comfortable that I won't lose 'everything'.

But how? It has been suggested to avoid KIES. I can of course do photos/music and other such files manually, but how about my apps, contacts and SMS? Once backed up, then reset, I am hoping for another relatively simple solution to restore. I really don't think it is practical to keep doing 'rebuilds' of the phones contents and key facilities.

Any advice at all will be much appreciated.

Phone is not rooted. Is on contract with Vodafone, but not locked to them.
 
For contacts, as long as you have them syncing with Google they will automatically return to your phone after the reset. For SMS you can use an app like SMSbackup & restore. For apps unfortunately you cannot back up app data unless you are rooted. For the apps themselves, I usually log into the play store from a PC and go to the My Android Apps section. From there you can start clicking on your apps to reinstall them.
 
If you back up with the phone using Google it will back up all your apps and data and contacts. It is under settings. You should backup first, then run the update, then factory reset. When you sign back in to your Google account after resetting it will ask if you want to restore. Click yes and everything will be restored via goggles server.

Edit: make sure your pictures, music and videos are on your SD card and they will not be touched
 
Thanks gents.

I was experimenting sync my contacts with gmail a short while ago and am getting a message that it is currently experiencing problems and will be back shortly. But Fire, you are saying I can back up my apps to Google as well? Will look into that

I never knew you could do that with the appstore Val!!

Thanks again
 
Been googling and am seeing that google will only back up the apps data and not the apps themselves? More than happy to be corrected though....
 
pharla said:
Been googling and am seeing that google will only back up the apps data and not the apps themselves? More than happy to be corrected though....
Click to expand...

Any time you download a app from Google Play it is stored in you Account. You can go back using the PC and send them back to your phone. There is also an app named App Backup and restore at the Play store that will backup your apps but not the data.
 
I'm not convinced it's consistant, but in the course of flashing new roms and generally playing around, I have seen that after the initial log-in to google on a fresh "phone", google will start to re-download and install all my apps.
I'm also not positive the app data is saved, but most of them don't store data on the phone anyway.

On the SMS front, I use a small app called Backup To Gmail that does just that, it backs up (and will restore) all my SMS/MMS traffic to my gmail account in it's own little folder. It's outstandingly simple and really nice to have them all in gmail. Call logs are included too.

There are backup solutions like MyBackup Pro that will backup just about anything and everything, but read up on what to restore and when.

Android isn't so much like a PC where you need a full, complete backup unless that's what you want. Like me when I'm flashing new ROM's to see how they run. Most of the data is in the cloud. It takes awhile to set things back up such as shortcuts and widgets, and to log back into everything. When using some aftermarket Launchers, you can back, up your "desktop" with them as well to speed things along.

It isn't Apple, no, but it's not brain surgery either. Mainly do make sure your music and photo's and such are on the external SD Card and they will be safe and right where you left them. There is also Box, and DropBox, and Amazon Cloud, and Google Drive, and MS SkyDrive, for manually storing stuff in the cloud. It all works pretty well untill you forget about something. :)
 
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