I finally got fed up with the phone situation and took it back to the Verizon store and insisted on a new phone. We tried everything and people kept telling me that I sounded muffled and they couldn't hear me. So Verizon was very good about it and over-nighted me a new phone. I took it to the store today and the woman had told me she could back everything up for me before switching to the new phone, and restore it afterwards, but it didn't work. All my apps are now gone, my settings, everything. I don't know what to do. She said something about backing up to the Verizon Cloud, and restoring using my gmail account, and she even had me log into my gmail account from the store, and did some stuff, but all my apps and settings are still gone! What do I do now???
ouch! I feel your pain. Unfortunately, the desk assistant that took care of you was not savvy enough to install a decent backup tool and use it to protect. Read on to help your self in the future.
All your Desk Assistant needed to do was install Samsung SmartSwitch. That app would connect both phones together and move everything over to the other phone.
but that is history, now to help you now.....
Please install Super Backup =>
* Super Backup : SMS & Contacts - Android Apps on Google Play
If you have an SD card, that app can make backups of all your apps, contacts, SMS messages, Call Logs, Calendars, Bookmarks to the SD card.
Don't stop there though.... as you backup each of those, send a copy elsewhere to be saved. Select the "Send to Cloud" option... you will then see a list of all the backups you have created "in that category", click on one of those backups and new windows opens showing a list of places to send that copy to. For me, I have these options as additional backups:
Evernote, Hightail, Email, Drive, Send by LAN, WiFi direct,
I always use the email option which actually shows 3 different email accounts to send it to.
Those email backups I save on the email server in a special folder named SuperBackups
I also download those email backups to my local PC, and that PC has a backup hard drive that is automatically sync'd to the main hard drive. Talk about backups, I have 5 copies of everything.
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Okay, that takes care of the future.
now, let's get your apps back on the phone.
Open Play Store, login if necessary
Touch the left side of the screen and slide to the right...
Open Settings: click on Download only via WiFi.....
Now, open that list again and select "My Apps"
The category of INSTALLED will show you what is currently installed on your phone, I am sure this is not all that you had on your other phone.
Slide the list to Left to ALL.
This will now show you everything that you have ever downloaded from the PlayStore.
IF it is on the phone, it will say "Installed" or "Update"
IF it is NOT on the phone, it will simply list the app and say "Free" or show the cost. Click on this app and it will reinstall it for you.
You are going to be very busy before you finish..... do make sure you have a WiFi signal before you do the downloads. In fact,
Once you get the phone fixed again, backup it up please.
Install Kies 3.0 and use that to back the phone up to your PC.... this will allow you to backup the entire phone in one fell swoop... everything will be backed up. except app data, that one falls thru the cracks.
please report back and let us know if we have helped you.
John