What are Google syncs really doing?

[ItsBond007]

Hello. Looking for ways to save battery life I noticed my Google account has multiple syncs taking a long time to complete consuming power.

Thought I had a decent understanding of what a sync does. Make a change in local data at one location and that change is reflected at another locations local data. Like your laptop and your phone

Trying to understand how different Google Apps sync on my phone, I don't see local data repositories or folders. Just an app performing as a user interface to a server in the cloud. For example Google Drive. I uploaded hundreds of photos, and after doing so that sync is taking forever. There is nothing local on the phone. Everything's in the cloud. Why is there a sync? I turned it off and it makes no difference. I can still see the photos and anything I pinned for offline viewing.

Things like this leave me scratching my head about syncs and what purpose they serve without any local repository of data. Can get somebody give me a brief explanation of what a sync is for on an Android phone? I know that may be hard to answer because each app works differently but maybe my example of Google Drive. How is the sync working there? Why do I need it at all?

I tried searching for answers prior to sending this message. but just like everything with Google it's so complicated and vague they assume you know. thank you in advance.

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Rukbat]

All the data that gets backed up (synced) is stored on your phone. It's also stored on the cloud server. It's also restored to other devices connected to that same cloud sync account.

If anything happens to the phone, the replacement phone syncs the same data from the cloud that the old one synced to it.

Google Drive is a manual operation. You can store any files you want on it, and in addition you can set it to keep a local copy on any or all your devices.

 

[ItsBond007]

Ok thanks.. So.. A sync is like an incremental backup... If I dig around on the phone more there will be a folder somewhere for most apps.. A sync for Google Drive is unnecessary (for me)

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[Rukbat]

It's a two-way incremental backup, with no baseline backup. (You'll have to do that yourself to a PC or cloud account - or both.) Delete a file on the phone, it's deleted on th backup.

Most apps are in a system file, so you'll have to root the phone first. (If you're at that level, Android is am emulator running in Linux, and su [and a whole bunch of other commands] have been left out. Rooting brings back a form of su [no root password - a popup lets you allow or disallow] and Busybox brings back the other missing commands.)

 

[ItsBond007]

So Android is a "wine" which would explain why some data folders are hidden. I'm wondering if a virgin mobile Samsung s3 is rootable.. It does not have a SIM card does that matter?

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