question on backup apps

[scott1256ca]

I've tried to use a couple of backup apps on a new (to me) galaxy s 4 running lollipop.
All I wanted to do was backup contacts/sms. Phone is rooted. Both would have been backing up to local storage, not in the cloud or anything.
Neither of them seem to restore. Helium when I backed up sms and then restored gave no error indication, but the sms which had been backed up did not restore. I looked in the files created, and I can see the sms as plain text but nothing restores.
Today I tried ultimate backup. Backed up contacts. Then I went in and removed a contact. Tried to restore. Contact was not restored.
Isn't that what these are for? So you can recover in case of some kind of loss?
Is there some trick to this? It seems like it should be straightforward. Rebooting the phone didn't help.
So what am I missing?
Is there some backup that works? I don't want to go removing contacts or sms history just to test this.
Thx

 

[anon(123856)]

I've used Backup and Restore SMS https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...eshsahu.SMSBackupRestore&hl=en&token=eSGn7jWU with success . There is a free version. I've done a hard reset and restored my SMS successfully.

 

[Crashdamage]

MyBackup Pro has been around almost as long as Android itself. It does general backups, including SMS/MMS. I'd saved and transferred those many times with MyBackup with no problems. Titanium is very good also.

Android since v1.0. Linux user since 2001.