Doing a restore on Galaxy S3 with an SD card

[Babaloogats]

Hi. I posted earlier about my Galaxy S3 bricking. It's bricked; no connection to it. It won't come up at all.

I finally got a replacement, a used Galaxy S3 from EBay. I moved the SIM card to the replacement and went to AT&T and got it activated. It works.

The data from the bricked phone was backed up to my PC using Samsung Smart Switch.

I tried connecting the replacement S3 with Smart Switch but the Smart Switch again says that the S3 is an unsupported device.

So I went to the local Samsung Experience store. I talked to the technician at the store and he installed the Samsung Smart Swtich app on the replacement phone. He then said to try connecting with my PC while the app is running on the phone.

I tried this but again, the Smart Switch on the PC complained that the S3 is an "unsupported device". No luck restoring my data.

The technician mentioned that I could try to restore the data using an SD card. That would mean copying the restored data from the PC to the SD card, then inserting the SD card into the Galaxy S3.

I would like to ask, is this possible? Has anyone tried this?

I am trying to

 

[hallux]

This may not be what you want to hear, but I would have spent money on a more recent device if you were going to have to replace your phone. That phone is running a VERY old version of Android that is no longer supported for app installs or new app capabilities. Even if you CAN get SmartSwitch to detect the device properly, I believe it relies on the Play Store for app installs so you may not be able to restore your apps properly.

 

[mustang7757]

I agree with hallux, that device is just too old to use as a daily.

 

[L0n3N1nja]

I agree with hallux, that device is just too old to use as a daily.

I'm surprised AT&T activated it, it won't work when they switch to VoLTE only. Verizon stopped activating devices that lack VoLTE.

 

[mustang7757]

I'm surprised AT&T activated it, it won't work when they switch to VoLTE only. Verizon stopped activating devices that lack VoLTE.

Good point ! App compatibility , security just lot of things against it .

 

[hallux]

@L0n3N1nja makes a great point - it's only a matter of time before that device can't even make a phone call anymore due to changes being made by ALL networks.

 

[L0n3N1nja]

I don't think you will ever get a full restore to work, you are dealing with a nearly 9 year old device that hasn't received a software update in around 6. Many apps are no longer compatible due to software incompatibility and other apps just won't run on something that underpowered.

When you restore as others have said it will redownload apps from the Play Store, not direct copy the install data, so any app that's been updated to a version your phone doesn't support won't install again. You will need to track down the install apks for old versions of apps.

 

[Babaloogats]

Thanks to the responses. I am going to get a new phone (the XCover Pro). I just got a used Galaxy S3 as a bridge between my bricked phone and the XCover Pro.

The main purpose of this old Galaxy S3 phone is to retrieve my data. After it is retrieved and I can somehow back it up, I'm disposing this phone when I get the XCover Pro.

So if anyone can let me know if I can somehow restore my data using an SD card, I'd appreciate it.

 

[L0n3N1nja]

I'm not entirely sure how smart switch handles a back up but if the individual files are available to you on the back up on the PC you should at least be able to recover photos and some other files by copying to the SD Card.

Personally I'm unaware of a way to move an entire smart switch back up to an SD card or restore it to the phone at that point.

I guess what information is most important to you? Do you need everything that was backed up?

 

[Babaloogats]

I'm not entirely sure how smart switch handles a back up but if the individual files are available to you on the back up on the PC you should at least be able to recover photos and some other files by copying to the SD Card.

Personally I'm unaware of a way to move an entire smart switch back up to an SD card or restore it to the phone at that point.

I guess what information is most important to you? Do you need everything that was backed up?

@L0n3N1nja, I can see the actual folder where Smart Switch saved the backup. For every backup that Smart Switch does, it creates a directory/folder that's named as a combination of a year-mm-dd-time format.

The files are in there. According to the tech at the Samsung store, if I copy that folder and put it on an SD card, he said he could restore it.

The reason I'm asking if this can be done in this forum is because the tech also said that if I installed the Smart Switch app on my phone, the Smart Switch app on my PC would connect to it. He was wrong. The PC app still thinks my device is unsupported. So I don't have full faith in the tech being correct about these technical issues. Hence, I'm asking the question here in this forum.

 

[mustang7757]

You would need a newer Samsung to get that backup from pc smart switch to transfer over , same if you had backup on SD card .

 

[Babaloogats]

You would need a newer Samsung to get that backup from pc smart switch to transfer over , same if you had backup on SD card .

@mustang7757,

To clarify, are you saying that even if I get the backup data on the SD card, I cannot copy it to my Galaxy S3 phone, using the Smart Switch app on my phone?

 

[mustang7757]

@mustang7757,

To clarify, are you saying that even if I get the backup data on the SD card, I cannot copy it to my Galaxy S3 phone, using the Smart Switch app on my phone?

I'm not sure being a phone that old how everything would transfer over if it can, newer samsung phones will .

 

[Kizzy Catwoman]

The S3 used a software called kies to backup and restore.