Help Unrooted GS4, best backup or how to avoid factory reset?

[Punkrulz24]

Good evening all,

I purchased my phone about two years ago and lately it has been acting a little wonky. It's been slow for some time, Dolphin was acting strange depending on networks, etc.

I decided that there was no other fix other than performing a factory restore. I did some research on backup programs, but I didn't have any luck and I installed helium in the past.

Helium failed miserably for me after performing the factory restore. Because of this, I'm looking to answer the following questions:

1) is there anything that can be done to keep me from having to factory reset the phone, to keep it quicker without it getting bogged down from time to time? Restarting almost daily and constantly killing tasks has gotten old. I like it's speediest ways after a restore.

2) is there anything that's close to a one stop shop backup option sort of how iTunes does it? Applications, appdata, SMS, and virtually everything I would need? Kies and Helium didn't seem to work right.

Thanks!

 

[Mr. Lucky]

I decided that there was no other fix other than performing a factory restore. I did some research on backup programs, but I didn't have any luck and I installed helium in the past.

Helium failed miserably for me after performing the factory restore. Because of this, I'm looking to answer the following questions:

1) is there anything that can be done to keep me from having to factory reset the phone, to keep it quicker without it getting bogged down from time to time? Restarting almost daily and constantly killing tasks has gotten old. I like it's speediest ways after a restore.

2) is there anything that's close to a one stop shop backup option sort of how iTunes does it? Applications, appdata, SMS, and virtually everything I would need? Kies and Helium didn't seem to work right.

Oops, bumped the Post button prematurely.
There are several things you could have tried first before taking the drastic step of a full reset. For example, booting into Recovery and then wiping the cache partition will often solve slowdown issues. If you had the time, you could have booted into Safe-mode, which disables user-installed apps. If everything was okay at that point, you could do a full backup (more on that later), uninstalled all but the most obviously safe user apps (i.e., from a major developer), and then reinstalled one by one to see if the problem came back.

How did Helium "fail miserably"? Admittedly, there are some apps it identifies as BACKUP DISALLOWED, but I have never in the 3+ years I've been using it had it fail to restore an app and/or its data when it said it successfully backed up… regardless of whether restoring to the same or a different device. If your S4 is not rooted, it requires a USB connection to a pc, using ADB. Are you sure everything is up to date and functioning on the computer? Also, I have found the developer to be helpful and responsive - his contact info is on the Play store.

Finally, you should never kill apps on recent versions of Android (and your S4 falls into that category). Android does a great job of managing memory, and unlike Windows, more memory in-use is not a bad thing.

Some additional thoughts…
Google removed external sd support, but Samsung added it back in. It's possible you have an app which allows you to install to sd but simply doesn't run correctly when it is.
Ref: http://www.phonearena.com/news/Why-Google-wants-to-kill-SD-cards-and-whats-holding-them-back_id23986 and http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/0...at-and-even-samsung-may-be-implementing-them/

 

[Punkrulz24]

Thanks for your reply Lucky. My words may have a bit harsh regarding helium. I had problems with both copying to the computer as well as backing up from the phone.

Computer: Everything is up to date as far as I could tell with my pc. Using Chrome, the backup would start to download however it would stop immediately at 0kb with no further progress. Using IE it would get maybe half way and stop dead. I tried to save the file it generated but that was damaged and unrecoverable.

Device: I was under the impression that the backup would occur on the SD card and not the device locally. Because of the S4s poor storage and my applications this wasn't able to happen, and stopped 3/4 of the way through. When I was able to recover the backup files, I assumed that it would in fact restore the backup of the application as well... Not send you to get the app, then separately restore the app data.

I've been told about not using the os to free up memory before... But when I would do things on the phone and it would start to become sluggish, the automatic memory handling wasn't cutting it at all. Sadly I never considered wiping the cache the way you recommended or testing safe mode.

I don't believe it was one particular app, but that's only because I've read before that the Galaxy series has had issues before where they get "bogged down" overtime.

I'm disappointed that I haven't been able to find an iTunes-esq one stop backup shop for Android yet... And I still need to figure out if there is one if it's worth it to root to be able to use it.

 

[Mr. Lucky]

Device: I was under the impression that the backup would occur on the SD card and not the device locally.
. . .
I assumed that it would in fact restore the backup of the application as well... Not send you to get the app, then separately restore the app data.

It can back up anywhere you want, if you give it access. I always backup to the cloud (Dropbox).

It does backup the app as well as data… or at least it can. You bring up a good point though. Although it's documented on the developer's website, AFAIK it's not documented anywhere within the app or on Play Store that in order to backup everything (i.e., app + data) you must first swipe up from the bottom to reveal the hidden menu with the checkbox for "App Data Only." It needs to be unchecked before pressing the Backup button in order to do a full backup, but unfortunately, the default is checked.

 

[Punkrulz24]

Because of the space issues I wound up doing app data. Unfortunately I never saw an SD card backup option though, just local and Dropbox or something.

I'm just terrified that when this happens again what to do if the cache reset doesn't fix the issue. I need to learn how to do this.

 

[jj14x]

Let's take a step back and see if a full backup is really needed.

Basically, try to list out WHAT you need backed up and restored. Personally, I don't worry about restoring individual apps because the play store will take care of restoring the apps.

Once the apps have been restored, I usually find there are 4 categories of apps

• Apps that use Google Authentication: Like G+, or Google Keep etc. Just launch the app, select the Google account, and done.
• Apps that have their own cloud account: Like Dropbox, Copy etc. Just launch the app, enter your credentials (I use lastpass, so even that part of entering credentials is easy), and done
• Local Apps that have custom settings - but allow exporting the settings/profiles: Like Custom Launchers or Tasker Profiles etc. For these, I export the settings in the app and back that up to a cloud account at least once a month.
• Local Apps that have app data - and don't allow export: Google Authenticator!!! This was the only time consuming app - had to go to my google account, and enter my credentials (use backup codes if old device was malfunctioning), deactivate old device, scan QR code to new device. Now, I just keep a copy of the QR codes printed out, safely hidden somewhere, and just scan it instead. Or you can use Authy app instead, which will fall into the 2nd category above.

So, if I lose my device today, or have to hard reset it, getting a new device completely set up takes about 30 minutes. Plus, the advantage of doing it this way is that you get a clean start, and get the latest version of the apps from the play store (in case of an OS upgrade, the latest app usually has more compatibility fixes)

Nowadays, even though I root my devices, I no longer use Titanium backup. Yeah, it would probably be a little faster (and no need to download the apps from the play store), but I think I have my process steps fine tuned where it is pretty quick.

Also check out this post that I had written some time ago http://androidforums.com/threads/complete-back-up.866374/#post-6696987


Edit: Totally forgot - you can use ADB to backup as well. Read up about it here - http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-nexus/general/guide-phone-backup-unlock-root-t1420351