Sensation broken, can Google sync restore my phone numbers?

Whydroid

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I banged my HTC Sensation (not Vodaphone, came sim lock free) and it stopped working (seems dead apart from amber/green battery charge lights and short vibrate when trying to power on) :(

Does a regular warranty repair normally keep the phone memory/settings intact or does HTC simply replace most terminal cases?
If not, will Google sync be able to restore my phone numbers to a same model but different phone? (I have no clue how to use it, any pointers on that are also welcome)

Previous to the accident I did disable every sync option I could find to save battery duration and data quota, so I'm wondering if the phone did sync with Google at all (I did get the Android 2.3.4 update and some low memory wizard app through regular HTC updates and was using wifi regularly, in case these matter, not sure how HTC updates tie in with Google, if at all). I had to register a gmail.com address for Maps or something similar. Can I log in to that account via a PC and check what/how was backed up and possibly restore it (or parse it) somehow?

Unfortunately I didn't have any specific backup app installed yet, so I hope someone can clue me in on how/when/what is being synced and how to restore things.
 

anon(105667)

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Everything that is saved at google servers will be synchronized to your new mobile even if it is another phone or model.
When saving a new contact you were asked where to save it, phone or your google profile. If you answered to your Google profile then, everything will be on your new phone after first synchronization.

Edit. Opss... I just saw you asked month ago. You ll know already the answer I guess.

Sent from my HTC Sensation
 

Whydroid

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Thanks for the info, I haven't actually heard anything conclusive yet (and not gotten a replacement yet). Sadly I don't remember having a choice between phone/Google profile (at least not in those words) so the question remains whether it's possible to somehow have skipped or disabled the syncing.

I was kinda hoping this would work in a way that every time you are in connection range (wifi only if not allowing background data over the air) it would try to sync the changes every 24 hours or so.

Also, supposing the syncing worked, do the numbers automatically reappear when you pair the new phone with your account? What about SMS messages?

BTW, I remember trying to copy between phone memory and SIM card and running into strange limitations (not possible to copy single numbers except one way from SIM, not able to copy to SIM, only whole phonebook dump to/from SD card, ending up with duplicate entries, most of them (but not all for some reason) automatically linked, so I had to unlink several hundred numbers by hand and delete them one by one).
 

Whydroid

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Update: I finally got the repaired phone back, as these things go it was indeed wiped (in spite of my request not to, it still has the same IMEI/hardware/case/etc. that I can see).

Unfortunately I can't even try to see what was backed up as the Google signup immediately returns a "login and password don't match, try again" and Google doesn't seem to reply to mail (or have any other helpdesk type contact info that I could find, looks like you're supposed to crowdsource help on their forums), so I basically gave up on that.

Thankfully I had most of my phone numbers backed up, but apps, SMS messages, settings including stuff like ringtones associated with numbers etc. are gone (apps isn't such a problem since I only downloaded a couple of free ones so far).

Not sure if this is a Google of HTC issue but I guess I'm OK with not having the signup (better for privacy anyway) except for irritating things like the browser refusing to load some pages in mobile view, which burns a lot of extra data, can be slower to load and less legible.

Edit: BTW, Google account login works fine on their webpage, even tried resetting it, to no avail.
 

Whydroid

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Thought I'd write up the conclusion for me as it might help others:

Finally managed to sign up with Google, turns out I had a separate device specific password which I thought was applicable only to app installations, luckily I wrote everything down and still had this one (no help from Google or HTC, found this myself by trying all passwords I had).

Looking into what gets backed up:

- SMS is not listed under the sync options for the Google account and can only be backed up from the messages app as all in one go to SD card, manually. I would assume this includes SMS' on the SIM card but can't be sure without restoring too (backup file seems to be compressed or encrypted). Restoring this can only be done to phone memory. You can still copy messages to SIM and from SIM to phone memory one by one though. A quick search reveals there are separate apps if you need other kinds of backup for this (but I lost mine since I didn't have any of that..).

- Contacts: in the People/view menu you can select what kind of contacts should appear, which are (after signup) 'Google', 'SIM' and 'Phone'. Contact type is given when adding one and apparently cannot be changed later. Unfortunately for me it seems all my contacts were in the Phone category, so I lost a few that were not in my SD card backup. You also can't copy from one category to another, so I would apparently have to reenter several hundred numbers for Google backup to be active, screw that. Maybe there are apps for this too, haven't looked into it yet. There doesn't seem to be any option for actually restoring any contacts, so I'm still not sure how this is supposed to work. Perhaps it's meant to be a sync option between multiple devices where each change on one device is replicated to all others signed up with the same account instead of a backup function. I would then assume that when you sign up with a new device, or like me after a factory reset, the Google category simply appears again, i.e. without any possibility of selecting older sync instances - so be careful when and what you sync, it seems the latest change overrules everything else.

- Apps: my downloads are still listed when I log into my Google account via a PC browser, but not on the phone. I would have expected this to reappear, or get a question about what to do when I signed back in and started the Market app for the first time.

- Settings: none restored that I can see, no options to do this that I can see, no questions asked about it. There is still an option under Privacy called 'Back up my settings' and one called 'Automatic restore', the latter purporting to reinstall application settings and other data when reinstalling these applications. When reinstalling Opera Mobile I didn't get my bookmarks back, so either I didn't properly sync them the first time (don't remember if I had the options on or off), or these options don't work.

I guess the moral of the story is preparation is key and you probably should go look for a proper backup solution instead of relying on the default settings doing the smart/right thing. I decided not to use the Google syn stuff for privacy reasons, I will just do manual backups of everything instead, maybe go look for a proper app to do this for me later. The contacts are easy enough to dump in text, which is the most important bit.
 

IEF

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SMS can be backed up through either SMS Backup and Restore, or the Sensation (Sense) has a built-in backup function, if you press the menu key un Messages.