I’ve been looking for a method to backup my phone so if I should loose or upgrade the firmware I’m able to restore the phone to its previous state. All of my contacts are either in Facebook or Email so I have no problems restoring contacts as they are all “cloud” based. What I would like restored is all of my SMS, MMS, Call Logs, Screen layout and installed applications and associated data.
After searching a number of forums I decided to use the application MyBackup Pro as this application seems to be highly recommended by the Android forums. This program was able to backup and restore my Call Logs, SMS and MMS data after I did a factory reset so that was pretty good, but to get all the other data I had to root my phone.
I’ll list the procedures below that I followed to root my phone, but after doing so I am now able to backup all Android Market applications and data, Home Screen layouts and other items.
I am reasonably happy with the MyBackup Pro application but it is not perfect. Below is a list of items that were and were not backed up.
— Lost Settings —
- Wallpaper
- Desktop widgets (even though they were restored from the application backup I just had to place the widgets back onto the appropriate desktop page)
- Wi-Fi Settings
- Bluetooth Name and Pairing
- Application screen layout
- Mobile AP settings
- Swype Data
- Inbuilt Phone Applications Accounts and Sync.
— Items that were Restored —
- Call Logs
- SMS and MMS
- Internet Browser Favourites and Page History.
- Desktop Layout
- Windows Live Settings
- Google Market Applications and Data
- Some other system systems.
I just used the default call notification settings so I don’t know if that was able to be restored or not.
For those of you that don’t already know I am using the Samsung Galaxy S, GT-I9000.
One of the good things I like about MyBackup Pro is that I can schedule a backup to occur on a daily basis at a certain time which is automatically backed up to the “cloud”. The trial version of MyBackup functions for 30 days and they give you 2 MB of online storage. When you purchase MyBackup Pro for about US$5 you get 100 MB of storage and you can also backup to a SD card if you prefer.
— Rooting Procedure —
Step 1.
For some reason as far as I’m aware the Galaxy S sold in Australia did not have the 3 button recover and download buttons activated. To activate this functionality you can follow the Fix 3-Button Combo Download & Recovery Mode In Samsung Galaxy S GT-I9000 from addictivetips.
Step 2.
You need to replace the recovery manager from Version 3 to version 2e. Version 3 does not allow the use of unsigned zip files but 2e does. Again there is an addictivetips page that describes the process called How To Install ClockworkMod Recovery On Samsung Galaxy S I9000. Even though ClockworkMod is not been installed, we are only interested in the recovery manager downgrade process.
Step 3.
The final step is to download and install the root functionality. There are many ways to do this but I find the easiest is to download the root update.zip file and apply to your phone now that recovery manager 2e is installed. Download the One-Click-Root file and extract its contents. Then copy the root.zip for Android 2.1 operating system or root2.2.zip as update.zip to your phone, boot into recovery manager and then select apply update.zip and your done.