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Apps Never lose my stuff - backing up app data

R

Russ

Lurker
Hello,

According to the Android Design Principles

Never lose my stuff
Save what people took time to create and let them access it from anywhere. Remember settings, personal touches, and creations across phones, tablets, and computers. It makes upgrading the easiest thing in the world.
Click to expand...

which I think is great. The app I'm designing involves storing photos and data about them. Is there a good way to back this up? I could sync with a webservice I could write/host, but then I'm opening myself up to potentially large bandwidth/storage charges.

I considered using drop box or something, but that would require my non tech savvy users to sign up. Is there any easy way to integrate the google cloud service (as my users will of course have a google account)? What do people normally do when they want to meet this design principle?

Many thanks
 
To make it cross device, the only option is to store it on a server somewhere that can be accessed from anywhere, but I find this guideline to be a bit of a stretch. It really depends on the type of app. For example, a productivity app might benefit this, but an app such as a drawing app wouldn't really benefit from it and it would suffice to just store the drawings on the user's sd card or internal memory.

Computers got along fine for years without the cloud. I think it's mostly just a gimmick, personally. Sure it can be useful, but it can also be a hindrance at times. Especially from a developers perspective.
 
A good point, well made, thank you.

You're absolutely right, how did we cope before the cloud? I take their point, I've changed from G1, to S1 and now S3 on my phone and not had any grief when changing handsets.

I'll have to think on if the feature is needed, some points to consider

Will the user change handset?
Will there be a web viewer/equivalent app to use the data?
Will the app have multiple users who share the data?

If I'm staying single user with access to the data then maybe just an export/import function would suffice.

I think I like the idea of storing everything locally and syncing with the cloud though. If anyone has any experience of this I'd be very interested.

Thanks
 
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