How do I

[jaytua]

I want to do a hard reset on my phone. How do I back up all of the apps and contacts, etc. Basically everything thats in my phone. My gps is acting up. Cant get it to lock. Im inside a building on the 25th floor. Downtown san francisco. Please help

 

[FrankXS]

I want to do a hard reset on my phone. How do I back up all of the apps and contacts, etc. Basically everything thats in my phone. My gps is acting up. Cant get it to lock. Im inside a building on the 25th floor. Downtown san francisco. Please help

Man, that really is quite a dilemma!

On the issue of backup and restore however, it's easy. All your apps from the Market will auto-magically re-appear as long as you logon to the same Gmail/Google account. As for the SD card, just hook up to your computer and copy the whole card off.

-Frank

 

[project.in.process]

You can start by making a better thread title. You'll get more help that way.

haha, wow. nice

before you do a hard reset--2 things to mention:
1) GPS on thunderbolt is finnicky--everyone is experiencing problems getting a solid signal/lock, and HTC is releasing a fix for this in the upcoming software push
2) have you tried clearing your GPS Cache to see if that fixes the problem?
in the marketplace, search for GPS STATUS, and use it to clear your cache and get a solid fix. it worked for me after i was having issues.

if neither of those are plausible for you, then do this:

1) menu>settings>accounts & sync> under Manage Accounts--tap each account you want to backup)> tap the checkmark box to enable the sync of Contacts/Email/Calendar (of your gmail accounts)
note: if the circle next to the account is not green, it won't be backed up/sync
2) after you've done this, return to the main screen of Accounts & Sync> hit 'SYNC ALL' at the bottom of the screen

that'll sync all of your google accounts, facebook accounts & any other accounts you've linked to your phone.

when you reset, just sign back in using your google account on the phone, then add each account once again & you'll begin filling your phone with all of your Calendar appointments, contacts & emails.

like Frank said, your apps are backed up through your gmail account.
once you sign back in to your phone, log back in to the Market app, and you can download all of your apps after you search for them.
(or, to see your apps in an easier UI, go to market.android.com, sign in, you'll see a list of all of your downloaded apps--and you can click "download" on each one)

marketplace app==need to search for each of your (unpaid) apps to re-download them
market.android.com==sign in, see a list of all of your apps, and do a remote install of them, pushing them from the internet browser
appbrain=download the app, sync your app list, wipe your phone, download the AppBrain app again, and it will automatically sync all of your apps.

note: unless you are Rooted, your app Data will NOT be backed up...that means you lose all progress on any game/customization (angrybirds)

 

[SoDev]

Man, that really is quite a dilemma!

On the issue of backup and restore however, it's easy. All your apps from the Market will auto-magically re-appear as long as you logon to the same Gmail/Google account. As for the SD card, just hook up to your computer and copy the whole card off.

-Frank

Mind blown.

 

[Rem]

Another important thing is to make sure that your contacts are saved under Google, not Phone. To check this, open the People app and then tap menu -> view and see the number of contacts listed for each option. If any of them are saved under Phone, you'll need to go back, tap menu again, import/export -> export to SD card. Then you can either a) leave them on the SD card to import after the factory reset (the reset does NOT wipe your SD card) or you can b) go ahead and import them now and choose Google when the "Create contact under account" prompt pops up.

 

[Drootz]

I want to do a hard reset on my phone. How do I back up all of the apps and contacts, etc. Basically everything thats in my phone. My gps is acting up. Cant get it to lock. Im inside a building on the 25th floor. Downtown san francisco. Please help

Are you rooted? If so, You could always use titanium backup or my backup root/pro/or free.

As for just the contacts you could use gmail account or vzw's backup assistant if you didn't have root.

 

[Rem]

like Frank said, your apps are backed up through your gmail account.
once you sign back in to your phone, log back in to the Market app, and you can download all of your apps after you search for them.
(or, to see your apps in an easier UI, go to market.android.com, sign in, you'll see a list of all of your downloaded apps--and you can click "download" on each one)

I'm not sure when this changed (because I know I had to find them all manually when I switched from Incredible to TB), BUT! I received my 2nd TB last week and when I first set the phone up, logged into my Google account and went to the Market it had already started to download all of the apps I'd had on my 1st one, both paid and free. Automagically.

 

[SoDev]

Interesting. Maybe because it was a different phone?

 

[project.in.process]

I'm not sure when this changed (because I know I had to find them all manually when I switched from Incredible to TB), BUT! I received my 2nd TB last week and when I first set the phone up, logged into my Google account and went to the Market it had already started to download all of the apps I'd had on my 1st one, both paid and free. Automagically.

hahah...this has now been integrated into my vocabulary. FrankXS shall live on.

when i switched from my Evo directly to my TB, my paid apps began downloading, but none of my free apps were downloaded. i had to search for them all.
i'd hope Google makes an online profile to which you could save apps and then all of those apps are automagically downloaded onto the phone when you tell it to (like after wiping your phone)

 

[Bats]

You can also save your contacts to your sim card