The Samsung Galaxy S24
Wild Banchi's profile

Master

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10.2K Messages

Tuesday, April 9th, 2013 12:33 AM

General Question About Android Backup/Syncing

Hello fellow Androidians,

I'm sure we're all aware of the iPhone hype and how it operates via iTunes are far as syncing, restoring, and backing up go. My question is, is the process somewhat the same for Android phones? I know it varies by the manufacturer, but let's say I wanted to backup all my pictures, music, apps, etc. to my computer before following through with a software update. How would a person go about doing that? Is there a particular program such as iTunes that would house all of this information, and then can be re-synced later on? When I used my Captivate on a daily basis, I was aware of a program called Samsung Kies, which I never tried out nor had prior experience with. Could that be similar to iTunes?

Pardon my ignorance. Android has really evolved within the last year!

:cathappy: Remember that Wild Banchi... 1993-2010 :cathappy:



Accepted Solution

Official Solution

Former Community Manager

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5.2K Messages

11 years ago

Hey WB - this should help: http://www.samsung.com/us/support/SupportOwnersFAQPopup.do?faq_id=FAQ00029017&fm_seq=29185

 

 

Kies allows you to create backups of the content on your device (and restore it later).

 

You can back up the following: contacts, S Planner (calendar events), messages, S Memos, call logs, music, photos, videos, miscellaneous content files, preferences and ringtones, network settings and bookmarks, and email account information.

 

Professor

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3K Messages

11 years ago

As you have already touched upon, it varies by manufacturer.  Samsung has Kies, and HTC has Sync Manager (and other manufacturers may have similar software) that back up some things, but not everything.  In particular, app data (game saves, for instance) is not backed up.

 

For a long time, there was no comprehensive backup solution for Android.  If you are rooted, there are some great apps (Titanium Backup is my favorite, and a long time staple among root users).  But there was really no good solution for non-root users, which is the category most Android users fall into. 

 

Now there is a 3rd party app named Carbon, that has been recommended by folks here.  It does what you want, and works on non-rooted devices.  I haven't used it personally, but it looks pretty slick:  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.koushikdutta.backup&feature=nav_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDMsImNvbS5rb3VzaGlrZHV0dGEuYmFja3VwIl0.

 

Itunes does have a pretty elegant solution for synching and backing up.  But at the same time, its very limiting, IMO.  I dislike the fact that you can't move any files to/from your computer without using iTunes.  My wife has complained on several occassions, how annoying it is that she has to launch iTunes every time she want to just copy a movie or music to her iPad.  And since she doesn't do it that often, she ends up having to update the iTunes version before it will let her copy the files.  So it ends up being a whole 10 minute process just to move some media to her device.   To me, that is one of the great things about Android.   Just plug into your computer, and drag and drop virtually any file.

 

Master

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10.2K Messages

11 years ago

I see. So basically, I was pretty much correct. I never noticed before how similar Samsung Kies is to iTunes, i.e. menus, setup, etc. I like that. 

 

@redpoint73 Yes, you are definitely correct about the pain of using iTunes. When I purchase apps from the App Store directly from my phone, they do not show up when I sync my phone back to iTunes on my computer. It's very frustrating. I've had to buy the same app twice. I figure they show saved OTA, unless there's something to do with iCloud or something... What a waste of money. Smiley Frustrated

 

On the other hand, I'm looking forward to the new Android phones being released soon. The S III is nice, but that 13 MP camera on the upcoming S IV seems really enticing. 🙂 Even the HTC One looks to be a total show stopper. The build quality looks amazing! 

Professor

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3K Messages

11 years ago


@Wild Banchi wrote:
When I purchase apps from the App Store directly from my phone, they do not show up when I sync my phone back to iTunes on my computer. It's very frustrating. I've had to buy the same app twice.

That's crazy.  You shouldn't have to do that, but I probably don't need to tell you that!

 

One of the great things about Android, once you buy an app, you can install it on any of your Android devices.  Its linked to your Google account, not the device.  There might be some exceptions, but for every paid app I've tried, this is the case.

 


@Wild Banchi wrote:
 

On the other hand, I'm looking forward to the new Android phones being released soon. The S III is nice, but that 13 MP camera on the upcoming S IV seems really enticing. 🙂 Even the HTC One looks to be a total show stopper. The build quality looks amazing! 


One thing to remember, as most smartphone manufacturers follow the marketing trend of pushing the camera MP higher and higher, the pixels get smaller and smaller, and therefore the amount of light each pixel captures gets lower and lower.  And with the tiny camera sensors on smartphones, this is not really a good thing.  More MP is good for blowing up or cropping pics, but bad for low light situations.

This is why HTC is bucking the trend, and actually going with less pixels (4 MP on the One), and increasing the amount of light captures by each pixel.  The result is slightly grainier pics if you enlarge or crop them.  But vastly better performace in lowlight and indoors.  HTC claims this fits better with how the huge majority of people use camera phones (although everyone is different, so it depends on your own usage).

 

 

 

Master

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10.2K Messages

11 years ago

That's right. I was shocked to see that the One had such a low megapixel resolution for the camera. I had thought that they would at least go with 8 MP. But hey, if they believe their technology is foolproof, then I'm not willing to criticize.

Professor

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3K Messages

11 years ago


@Wild Banchi wrote:
That's right. I was shocked to see that the One had such a low megapixel resolution for the camera. I had thought that they would at least go with 8 MP. But hey, if they believe their technology is foolproof, then I'm not willing to criticize.

Well, I certainly wouldn't say "foolproof'.  Its not universally "better" in all situations, and depends on how you use your camera phone and the resulting pics.  Some early reviews have been complaining that pics taken in well lit situations are a bit "soft" or "mushy" due to the lack of resolution and over-processing.  And the images will be more grainy if cropped and/or enlarged.  But the low light performance looks simply amazing for a phone.

 

I'm pretty excited about the One, but the mixed camera reviews from some sources left me a bit disappointed.  Until I saw the brilliant review on Anandtech.  Its increbly detailed and technical,  written virtually from an engineers standpoint (which I am, so its my kind of writeup).  It almost completely dispelled any reservations I had about the camera on the One.  The still camera part of the review is 4 webpages long in itself. So don't forget to click through, if you're interested in reading the whole thing:

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6747/htc-one-review/4

 

Tutor

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10 Messages

11 years ago

There are also a few other options in addition to Kies (I use Kies, but also two others).

 

1) Double Twist - will sync with your iTunes account and put all of your selected music and playlists right on your Android phone.  I still purchase my songs through iTunes so they are all in the same place (used to have an iPhone).  It does not sync your contacts though.  It will sync podcasts with an add on app.  Double Twist has a music player too.

 

2) Drop Box - great for syncing your photos to your computer!  I love drop box and it stores your pictures in the cloud so you can get to them anywhere.  It is free for a certain amount of storage (not sure, maybe 3GB? I've been taking pictures since December 2012 and haven't ran out of free storage yet). 

 

Kies does back up everything, but I think it's more useful for restoring if you need it and your phone is not rooted.  I do keep a backup in Kies on my computer in case I ever need it. If you have a google account, it backs up your contacts too.

 

Kies is not the most reliable software though, so that is why I use more than one program.  It is not reliable in the aspect that it only recognizes that your phone is plugged in with Windows 7 about one time out of 25 connects.  If you google this, it's a pretty common problem.  It becomes a big issue when you are trying to update the phone, and I can only imagine how irritating it would be if you were trying to restore a phone.

Master

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10.2K Messages

11 years ago

Thank you for your input, nurseshely! I have heard about Double Twist before, but this is a better explanation.

Scholar

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151 Messages

11 years ago

I've used Kies on 2 Samsung phones and found it very undependable. In one case it started duplicating my contacts during each sync, so I wound up with 2, then 3 entries for each one in Outlook. So I stopped using it for that purpose and switched to MyPhoneExplorer, which worked *much* better. Then I tried using it when I had to do a master reset. It backed up everything, but then during the restore almost nothing returned. I got some generic error message about being unable to complete the restore. This happened on both phones, and twice on one of them. Now I won't trust Kies for anything.

Professor

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3K Messages

11 years ago


@nurseshely wrote:

There are also a few other options in addition to Kies (I use Kies, but also two others).

 

1) Double Twist - will sync with your iTunes account and put all of your selected music and playlists right on your Android phone.  I still purchase my songs through iTunes so they are all in the same place (used to have an iPhone).  It does not sync your contacts though.  It will sync podcasts with an add on app.  Double Twist has a music player too.



Double Twist is great.  I use it to sync my iTunes music as well.  BTW, Amazon is a much better place to buy music, IMO.  They sell as MP3 format, which is much widely acceptable compared to Apple's proprietary AAC format.  And Amazon prices are often cheaper than iTunes.  Amazon will download the songs right into your iTunes directory, so no fears about having your music all in one place.

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