[captivedroid]

I've backup'd my apps before on Google Drive. Then I figured that it was pointless, because it was eating up my cloud drive, and when I did reinstall the apps, I had to reconfigure, login, and authenticate everything again.

All data is backup'd by cloud -- photos, notes, etc.

But what's the point of backing up apps, if it doesn't backup the data cache that configures your app settings?

[Moshe Barash]

I've backup'd my apps before on Google Drive. Then I figured that it was pointless, because it was eating up my cloud drive, and when I did reinstall the apps, I had to reconfigure, login, and authenticate everything again.

All data is backup'd by cloud -- photos, notes, etc.

But what's the point of backing up apps, if it doesn't backup the data cache that configures your app settings?

1. If you have superuser access you can backup your apps along with their data files.

2. Even if you can't backup the data, it's nice to not have to go searching through the Google play store for your apps.

[captivedroid]

1. Is superuser access an app or root access?

2. Google Play Store already has information on all the apps you had installed. You don't need to go searching.

[Moshe Barash]

1. Is superuser access an app or root access?

2. Google Play Store already has information on all the apps you had installed. You don't need to go searching.

1. Superuser access is the real term for root access

2. Yes, however the Google play store sometimes installs apps that you do not want it to. For example: let's say that you install app 1 and after a day or so you decide that you don't want it so you uninstall it, well the Google play store might install it when it restores your apps.

3. Here is another reason to back up your apps: let's say you update an app and the update rendered the app useless, if you backed up the previous version you can just install the previous version.

[Rukbat]

As Moshe said in #3, an app like Maps used to be really useful. If not for MyDirections it would be a completely useless app now. If they update an app to death, you uninstall it, then reinstall the older, working version.

As for configuration, that's app data, and Helium does that nicely. Just connect the phone to a computer, download and run the PC end they give you the link to while Helium is waiting to connect (cyanogenmod.com/carbon IIRC), run the program and Helium will run without the phone being rooted. (And to follow Moshe's exactness in #1, it's the ROM that gets rooted, not the phone.) I just went through that with an update - 5.0 blew root of course, so I had to run the Helium PC program. You choose the apps you want to back up data for (you're not going to save data for some of them because they have no data to save, or all you have to "configure" is an email address or something) and back up. Then you'll have a folder named carbon (Helium's old name, I think). Store that folder somewhere.

It doesn't have to be on your Google cloud account. MEGA gives you 50GB free, and you can keep another copy of your apps and data on your hard drive.