Duplicating phone setup

[FBA]

I'm wondering, because I have 2 Note 3's; one that I use, and a backup in case that one dies.

If I move my SIM card to my backup phone, and boot up the phone (the phone was recently wiped with nothing installed), and I log into my Gmail account, will the phone rebuild itself as if it were the Note 3 I use every day? Both phones are registered at Google play.

That's the exact behavior I'm looking for...and if it doesn't work that way, is there the possibility of making it work?

 

[jpr]

You can only do this if you are rooted. Since you didn't mention that I'll assume you are not, but if you are rooted there are several possibilities that I will not go into here.

Things you can do on a non-rooted phone:

- Use Google Backup and Restore. This is in your phone settings. You will need to keep it always checked on your phone because it will delete all backup data if you ever uncheck it. It does not backup as much as you would assume. The important thing is to set your phone up with the same google account. Then you will have your contacts, calendar, gmail and chrome browser (sometimes stock) bookmarks and your apps will be available to download from Google Play. It's supposed to back up settings and things like WiFi passwords but I never once had that work for me. It's hit and miss what works or doesn't. It will not back up app data unless the app dev has specifically set up their app to do so and I have yet to find one app I use that is.

- You can use backup apps from the play store. There are several. Some are specific, like only backing up SMS, and some are more general purpose. Most do not back up app data without root. Helium is one that I have used to backup and restore app data without root. It can be buggy and sometimes I have had to manually restore some apps using ADB that would not restore through the interface. But it is one of your best bets for non-root app data restore. If you don't want to download all your apps again from Play Store you can save the apk files in many backup apps and restore through the backup app or by manually executing the files. The apk files do not include app data.

- You can use ADB, a command line tool, to manually backup and restore things but this is really tedious and not for most people.

The truth is there is no good non-root way to duplicate your phone to another. You have to use bits and pieces of different methods and then still set up some things manually.

 

[FBA]

Thanks - I tried it last night, but was totally unsuccessful. I activated the 2nd phone on the same Google account, (and the 1st one had Google backup enabled), but the apps didn't automatically download, as they would have have if I'd just wiped and restored the other Note 3 I was using. I had to go to the Playstore and select / download all the apps. Obviously - it didn't setup my previous launcher either, or WiFi Passwords.

This is where Android falls a bit short against BlackBerry. I know I can root and use Titanium backup, but I don't want to root, and I'm not interested in restoring from an image backup.

The reason I have 2 devices, is so that I can use one for backup if the 1st one fails, but it's hours of work to restore it...

The Playstore app should be smart enough to create a perfect clone from scratch if both phones are identical.

 

[anon8380037]

That's what I would want to do if I could afford, and had the lifestyle that needed it. My ex contract clients/employers had an in house IT company and they could swap BlackBerry's at will.
There are loads of scenarios where having a second phone without a sim card, or keeping an identical and constantly synced second phone with a different sim and number, or the same number switchable, is virtually necessary.

Android, and possibly all other OS can be such a pfaffle. There is still a lot of growing up to do.

Sent from my N9005 using Tapatalk Pro

 

[FBA]

BlackBerry Enterprise servers (legacy software) were capable of doing this easily...until BB10 OS came out, and that was the end of that (and BB).

You could take a virgin device - sign in to your account and within minutes, all would be exactly as the previous device. Android just doesn't come close in that respect, but it does everything else better than BB.