What is a good Backup/Restore strategy for new phone (Verizon)?

gardengal4

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Nov 25, 2011
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Best Backup/Restore strategy for new phone (Verizon)

I was told to use Verizon Cloud to backup everything on my old phone. I am hesitant because I read some negative reviews that folks have lost stuff in the process. Is this the best way to go? Any tips or gotchas?

Does the backup just copy selected areas or does it copy the whole drive like an image? Does it retain date-time stamps? Is any history saved?

Can I just do a one-time backup and avoid syncing? I think sync glitches are probably the most scary/risky part of backing up.

I am also a little confused because I currently have an ext_sd on my existing phone (htc). When I look at the folders/files via my PC compared to File Explorer on the phone, things don't look quite the same. I think links make it a bit hard to digest.

My new phone has a SD slot so in theory, I don't need to backup stuff on my SD card, but its unclear what's where.

My pictures all go to dropbox automatically, so I'm not too concerned but still would like them transferred to the new phone. Most are on the sd card, but not all.

Apps are going to be interesting. Some of my favorite apps are old and no longer in Google Play. Also got a bunch from Amazon Appstore in the past. They might not all be there either. Their data and settings are a big concern. Does a backup/restore get everything so no re-install is necessary?

And what about game play? I think my king games are just local to my phone. I don't login to any cloud to play. And I have several other games and tools I hope will still work.

Does Android have a registry like Windows that apps use? Or do apps just dump everything they need in a folder (input and output).

Are most apps likely to be upward compatible from Android 4.0 to 5.1?

Can I still use old phone & apps under wifi after I activate the new phone?

Sorry so long. I'm very apprehensive about this upgrade process. ...
 

Mooncatt

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Feb 23, 2011
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Re: Best Backup/Restore strategy for new phone (Verizon)

Some of those questions are beyond my level, but I have used Helium before to backup my apps and their data (I.e. Game saves and such) when doing a warranty exchange. It doesn't require root and is pretty easy, but Motorola phones apparently don't work with it. Contacts are already backed up through Google, and I just manually backed up the rest of the files I wanted to my computer. When I got the new phone, I was back up and running in under an hour, having everything backed up and ready to go ahead of time.

I think when going to a different phone, the apps should install fine. I used Titanium Backup to backup a rooted Bionic to move apps to my M8 and the apps and data transferred fine.
 

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