There And Back Again, A Nexus' Tale

[RichSz]

I mentioned in another thread my Nexus had issues. The screen's contrast was extremely low even during the boot screen so it wasn't a weird setting or app.

I contacted ASUS via web chat and the agent told me it should be returned for repair then gave me the proper URL to get it going. I locked, unrooted and wiped the device. By the way locking does NOT wipe, though unlocking does. Good to know.

The instructions ASUS sent me said not to use the original box for shipping back. Curious, I called ASUS to ask why. I was pleasantly surprised that I was only on hold for a few minutes. The rep said they toss out the boxes and since the serial number is on there, I'd want to keep it. Since I had removed the serial number sticker from my device, I wrote it on a piece of paper and taped it to the back. Interesting to me was that they would try to repair the device instead of just swapping it out as most companies do.

My N7 was mailed on Sat, 12/8. I got a mailnote on 12/13 that it was heading back and it showed up at my door on Sat, 12/15. My homemade sticker was still on the back so it's the same device.

I suspect they swapped out the display because I did have a slight yellowing in the upper left corner where my battery level notification sat but now is absent. The device works fine and I'm happy to have it back. It's surprising how much I've become reliant on it. My iPad was NOT a suitable substitute.

I did spend some hours setting it back up; installing and configuring my apps. The only downer here is how lousy Android is at backup and restore. If it was an iPad, it would have been painless. I've seen this with my own eyes.

So that's the tale. I'm posting this to let everyone know that even when something went wrong, ASUS took care of it quickly and correctly with pretty good communication and courtesy.

 

[pastafarian]

Glad everything is OK! How is the ipad more painless to restore? I've set up and restored both but didn't see a huge difference. You do have to reconfigure your launcher screens on the Android side (unless using anther launcher like Nova), mainly because there's so much more there than the ipad's monotonous rows of icons interface.

 

[RichSz]

I did something stupid with my iPad once and managed to wipe it (took an OS update on a work computer without backing it up on that computer. It went bad in the middle of the update). I plugged it into to my home computer, brought up iTunes and restored it. The entire tablet was in the exact state with apps and data that it was when I backed it up. It was painless.

With Android, it will offer to download your apps for you (which is nice) but you're on your own for the data. I even backed everything up with Titanium (apps and data) yet when I tried to restore Plume, for example, it was as if I just installed it for the first time. I spent the afternoon yesterday setting stuff up.

On top of that, when backing up my N7 onto my Win7 PC, copying large chunks of data often timed out or copied the directories but not their contents. It was a nightmare. Copying MP3s onto the N7 gets you constant prompting about whether you really want to do that or not. That's using the Nexus Toolkit supplied drivers and the original USB cable. It shouldn't be that hard.

I'm tech savvy. I shudder to think how someone who isn't would cope. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, dunno.

 

[El Presidente]

Despite the fact it took them 3 attempts to fix my transformer, I was impressed with their turnaround and their process. They sent someone to collect during the day and it was always in the Czech Republic (their European service centre) by midnight. It was always back within 4 days too.

 

[Deleted User]

Glad everything is OK! How is the ipad more painless to restore? I've set up and restored both but didn't see a huge difference. You do have to reconfigure your launcher screens on the Android side (unless using anther launcher like Nova), mainly because there's so much more there than the ipad's monotonous rows of icons interface.

Apple's backup and restore process is excellent.

It backs up an entire system image, similar to what Titanium Backup does, only it also captures system settings and stuff, and it works out of the box without a paid app or rooting your phone.

When you go to restore, it does a full wipe of your device and after the restore, it's as if nothing happened. It's all back exactly like it was.

It's just awesome. I like my N7 a whole lot more than my girlfriend's iPad, and I like my Android phones better than the two iPhones I owned... but there are a couple things that Apple does really well, and backup/restore is one of them. Of course, you have to tolerate iTunes if you want to do it

 

[Teknologic]

You can use a pc program like the wugs toolkit to backup your entire system without rooting.
And of course if you're rooted a nandroid backup is the exact same as you described, backs up every single app and setting and restores it fully if you want.

 

[Deleted User]

Again, it's not that you can't figure out an alternative. But it is not even close to the same easy experience. A nandroid is not the same thing, because it also restores all of your cache/OS files/etc., which you may not want to keep, whereas the Apple version wipes your system, installs a clean OS, and then restores your apps/settings over the top.

The Wugs toolkit, I believe, does not back up your system settings - and in any event, it has the opposite problem in that you have your apps etc, but you're still at the mercy of the phone manufacturer to provide a recovery image of some kind.

I'm telling you, there's just no comparison. Apple does backup/restore/recovery right. I mean, you have a dead device? You boot it into recovery and plug it into a computer. iTunes says, "I see your phone is in recovery mode. Would you like me to restore the OS (Y/N)? When I'm done, would you like me to restore all your settings (Y/N)?"

You walk away for 10 minutes and when you come back, the device is just as you had it, only it's a new clean install.

I've spent a lot of time in various recovery modes, restoring Nandroids, Titanium Backups, manufacturer images - leaked and official... I know it can be done. But I also know that Android desperately needs some equivalent to the Apple backup/restore if they want to have a user-friendly way of moving between devices or restoring problem devices.

The funny part is there's this killer feature, the cloud-based automatic backup, that is completely effing useless because not every app uses it.

Anyway... </soapbox>