Develop Bugs

Best way to back up apps/settings?

Ok, I have the Evo completely rooted.
I want to be able to back up my applications, settings for those applications, as well as standard settings on my phone.
Titanium Backup - I can backup apps, however system info seems to break / cause force closes among different roms. It is hard to tell what is important and what isn't. I want settings such as default ringtone / configured desktop widgets and folders / wifi settings / lock pattern etc. to be backed up and restored easily.
Nandroid - Nandroid backups are almost perfect, except that they don't work w/ different roms. I want it to do exactly what it does.. copy everything as is.. but while retaining the functionality of the rom I choose. I get that this is not what it is supposed to do, I'm just giving it as an example as to what I would like in a back up app.
So basically, I want to be able to easily switch between roms (I use Avalaunch Froyo most of the time, 2.1 for photos/recording etc, and will probably use new Froyo builds coming soon) and maintain all the OS settings and App settings. So far I haven't been able to find what I need. Can someone point me in the right direction?

ive always has this question as well...

I am not sure how often you switch between ROM's, but I switch every other day or so. When I switch I make a NANDROID before hand then when I get to the new ROM I delete the old one off the SD card. I know that isnt an answer to you question. It is just what I do and it works for me. If there is a program that would back up all of it would be amazing.

Titanium backup. Available in the android market. Only works on rooted phones.

carguy4471 said:
Titanium backup. Available in the android market. Only works on rooted phones.
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Not to sound like a douche, but I'm fairly certain you didn't even read the post.

Check out my sig. All your answers should be in my guide. If you have any questions or think it's missing something feel free to leave a comment in that thread.

I checked it out, and it just isn't specific enough. It is good though.
As a previous poster said, I change my rom every few days and do Nandroid backups.. but with the new froyo source released, I'm sure a flood of good roms will come out, and while I try them out, I don't want to have to configure my basic settings each time, such as where I like my widgets, enabling swype keyboard, or disabling default SMS and setting all the options in handcent, etc.
Trust me, it takes over an hour each time. As more cool apps come out, it'll take more time to configure. Also, since Sprint is awesome and lets you upgrade every year now by being a premier customer, I plan on sticking w/ android and want to be able to have a smooth transition when I get my next phone.
Titanium Backup seems like it can get the job done, and maybe I just need a specific listing of which system data file is for what. I tried to copy just the things that seemed necessary, and I still got force closes on things such as trying to open my sound settings.

Most of the system items highlighted in Green in Titanium are of important settings/databases. Also, I can confirm that if you back up the "[DESKTOP]HTC Sense 1.00" entry, then your sense Desktop (meaning icon locations and widget placements) will be restored to where you had them.
If you are not running Sense though, and instead using a custom launcher like ADW, helix, launcher pro, etc...Then I can only guess that if you back up those using the App+Data option that it will also remember icon/widget placements, but that is only an assumption. I have limited experience with those launchers.

MichaelWestin said:
I checked it out, and it just isn't specific enough. It is good though.
As a previous poster said, I change my rom every few days and do Nandroid backups.. but with the new froyo source released, I'm sure a flood of good roms will come out, and while I try them out, I don't want to have to configure my basic settings each time, such as where I like my widgets, enabling swype keyboard, or disabling default SMS and setting all the options in handcent, etc.
Trust me, it takes over an hour each time. As more cool apps come out, it'll take more time to configure. Also, since Sprint is awesome and lets you upgrade every year now by being a premier customer, I plan on sticking w/ android and want to be able to have a smooth transition when I get my next phone.
Titanium Backup seems like it can get the job done, and maybe I just need a specific listing of which system data file is for what. I tried to copy just the things that seemed necessary, and I still got force closes on things such as trying to open my sound settings.
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If you are going to be going back and forth between Froyo and Sense 2.1, don't bother trying to back up your account/widget/home configuration. It's different between the two and could mess things up. Also, many people put out roms that are zipaligned or deodexed, you might not want to restore stock apps on top of those.
I'd recommend doing two things.
1. Use a nandroid backup to save a "snapshot" of your current rom so that you can easily go back to it (with all of your settings intact).
2. Use Titanium Backup to just get your user apps and information when you want to move to a new rom. Setting things back up can take a little time, but it's better than wondering why you're getting force-closes or wakelock problems. This will keep all of your user app settings (like Handcent or Swype) but you will just need to enable them in your settings menu.

Now that we have perm root, titanium backup

guys, i cant stress this enough and i'm sure the old android heads here will agree with me. their are many many different android phones out there that have root. And although they're all different they all have a few apps in common. setcpu, rom manager, terminal, titanium back up.
I just want to touch base on Titanium backup.
It allows you to totally remove any app, including bloat ware. You can also suspend apps.
the freeze feature was handy because i enjoy sense but didn't like its apps and widgets hogging ram for no reason; considering i never used those sense apps. it netted in a nice battery and performance gain, at least.
one awesome thing about TB is the ability to back up your apps and reinstall all of them. the whole experience is as streamlined as batch market downloading and waaaaaay better than astro file managers one at a time annoying install.
Also, after a full wipe you will definitely want to run market dr so u can easily keep tabs on your updates.
in short, you wouldn't bang her/him without a condom right? well don't flash with out titanium backup!
I totally recommend the paid version!!!!!

So now we can uninstall completely without consequences web2go, Pico TTS, Quickoffice, Listen , Home screen tips, Google Skymaps, Google Translate, Goggles, Finance, wifi calling, etc ??
I was about to but i got a message that said i might have to reinstall the ROM if something craps out...

mauaus said:
So now we can uninstall completely without consequences web2go, Pico TTS, Quickoffice, Listen , Home screen tips, Google Skymaps, Google Translate, Goggles, Finance, wifi calling, etc ??
I was about to but i got a message that said i might have to reinstall the ROM if something craps out...
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you should be able too delete what u want. I wouldn't remove wifi calling though lol
I would wait for a clockwork recovery version to be available. This way u can make a backup before u delete all that

sheek360 said:
you should be able too delete what u want. I wouldn't remove wifi calling though lol
I would wait for a clockwork recovery version to be available. This way u can make a backup before u delete all that
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Im not with tmo it says invalid sim so its of no use to me. Is there a workaround?

mauaus said:
Im not with tmo it says invalid sim so its of no use to me. Is there a workaround?
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oh i see,
in regards to a backup? i think itll be best to be safe than sorry and wait till clockwork recovery is released.

is there a big difference between the free and paid version? what im asking is would i still be able to do back up and delete bloatware with the free version

The batch is MUCH better with the paid version, definitely well worth it

mikeybot said:
The batch is MUCH better with the paid version, definitely well worth it
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I agree!!!!!!!!!

Just one thing: please don't forget that system apps (ie: apps that are part of your ROM) themselves can't be restored by TitaniumBackup for now. Only their data is backed up. So if somebody is not 100% sure about removing a system app, it's wise to try freezing it first -because that's easy to undo.

So how do we do the remove of unwanted apps
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using XDA App

[Q] Have question after root

I finally got the nerve up to root. Wow simple thanks to all the advice here at XDA.
Now, the question, and yes some what of a noob , but hey, I rooted, with no questions. LOL
I was under the impression that the Sprint bloatware, when removed with Titanium would free up storage (internal).
I have deleted , football, kindle and a couple others and have not seen any change.
And also what is safe to remove. I followed a link and it showed about 8 progs.
Thanks to all, I am a real good computer hacker. going back to the 90's, but for some reason get nervous doing the phones.
BTW love my EVO
had g-1 and nexus 1

It should show for internal however the apps you are removing might not be that big.
You can remove sprint TV, voicemail, football, nascar, (sense), radio, sprint app updater, Nova, Amazon mp3, stocks,all corresponding Widgets, basically everything sprint puts on the phone. One thing to remember is you need peep if you sync Facebook otherwise you will constant sync.

Thanks for the reply. How about you tube?

You could also flash a different ROM. I know from reading that there are close to stock ROMs that have all of the bloatware removed & even in some cases, Sense, but they're still Sense-based ROMs. I stuck with stock for a while, but finally switched to Cyanogenmod & was amazed at the amount of free ram compared to stock. I'm not sure about internal storage, but I don't move any apps to the SD (even though I could move all of them, minus widgets, if I wanted) and I have a ton of apps downloaded with ~250mb left in internal storage. I'm not sure how this compares to you, or if you'd want to change ROMs, but I suggest making that jump.
Edit: YouTube is safe to remove. You should, however, freeze them instead of uninstalling if you want to stay on stock & potentially accept an ota update in the future. If you've already removed some, then go ahead and remove them all.

Thanks, I plan I flashing in the near future. But damn, there are so many to choose from. It does seem CM is popular. Right now (one step at a time) just getting rid of bloat and duplicates.

wd20293 said:
Thanks, I plan I flashing in the near future. But damn, there are so many to choose from. It does seem CM is popular. Right now (one step at a time) just getting rid of bloat and duplicates.
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I guess what I'm saying is, if you plan to flash anyway (at least in the near future), removing bloat is redundant. Custom ROMs don't have bloat installed anyway. I know it sounds like a daunting task, but with the right amount of general technological knowledge/experience you'll do just fine. I was nervous too but after my first flash, I switched recoveries (I prefer Amon Ra over CWM), flashed a custom font and a theme within a week.
Just be sure to make a backup, and if you don't like it or something goes wrong you can just switch back & you'll be right where you left off.
But if you're not ready or you don't want to, that's perfectly fine. If you need someone to guide you through it & help you with the step by step, feel free to pm me when you're ready. There are plenty of other members here that will do the same.

wd20293 said:
Thanks, I plan I flashing in the near future. But damn, there are so many to choose from. It does seem CM is popular. Right now (one step at a time) just getting rid of bloat and duplicates.
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I was once a newbie, just to let you know out of all the roms. CM has been the best, super fast great battery life. and the best of all now it has 4G. Before it didnt however CM7 RC2 now supports it.
Flashing a new rom is super easy just reboot the phone into recovery, (holding down the power button and vol down button on boot) make sure you have your rom zip file on the SD and flash it. DONE reboot and enjoy.
You can backup your text messages but i dont because its just more stuff to reload on the phone
In other words JUST DO IT!! I've never looked back since i started to flash my phone. and i hope you dont either.

Ya like the guy said above , freeze the apps dont delete them. And as far as a rom goes i would recommend the Destroyed Gingerbread Rom.. it owns!!!

barnacles10 said:
It should show for internal however the apps you are removing might not be that big.
You can remove sprint TV, voicemail, football, nascar, (sense), radio, sprint app updater, Nova, Amazon mp3, stocks,all corresponding Widgets, basically everything sprint puts on the phone. One thing to remember is you need peep if you sync Facebook otherwise you will constant sync.
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This is news to me. Can you or someone elaborate on this? I removed Peep a long time ago and I haven't noticed any issues with Facebook.

Finally got the nerve, CM is on. Gotta go play, get back later with my experience of it.
Thanks for the encouragement to all, so simple. Ha ha

It doesn't matter quite as much now that you're on CM, but just FYI, deleting apps that came with the stock ROM (or any rom for that matter) usually doesn't give you more space to install other apps -- at least not directly. Your phone has different partitions. Apps you install go to /data. Apps that come with the rom are in /system. Deleting from /system doesn't give you any more in /data.
You will save a little space on /data because it won't store the dalvik cache of that app (at least it will if you remove it. I'm not sure if freezing keeps it from caching the dex).

New ROM; Needing old App

Im about to flash to a new ROM from Myn's Warm 2.2. Love the ROM but I wanted to venture to another to test out. However, I have an application called AuthAnvil, it is used at work and is a variable pin code that syncs with a server. Is there any god forsaken way to save the app data so I do not have to jump through the hoops at work to resync the app. I did a full ROM backup just in case and also a Titanium backup. Will this work for me to restore it to the new ROM all settings in tact?

It should work fine if you backed up the app and system data to go with it. What I do in TB is make a custom filter with apps and their data that are really important that way I only back up what I need.
I make a filter called important then restore my apps/data to new rom, works flawless.
Sent from my PC36100

dirkyd3rk said:
It should work fine if you backed up the app and system data to go with it. What I do in TB is make a custom filter with apps and their data that are really important that way I only back up what I need.
I make a filter called important then restore my apps/data to new rom, works flawless.
Sent from my PC36100
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yea but TB has known to be unstable when going from dif. types of ROMs, like from froyo to ginger, sense 1 to sense 2.1 or 3.0, etc. I would look on your SD card to see if any data is on there.. or if possible move app to SD then copy data, put back on after reflashing.

Its been a while since I posted on this but I have diagnosed this a few separate times and Finally! the authentication app company actually had enough complaints to post something on their FAQ.
But it seems that there are certain app's like say an authenticator that when you download it to a sense based rom you can flash all day long to different sense based roms without any issues. Once you go to any AOSP roms it will break the key generator. You can restore it all you want, it will not display the digits.
Now my real curiosity is that its just an app, it doesn't know the difference thats in on a HTC sense based phone or a Samsung. Am I looking to much into it because it is a Two factor authentication app and more stuff runs then I realize? Or is the app design flawed?

[Q] Iso image backup, is nandroid only option?

Hey guys I have two questions.
1. I would like to do a backup of my phone the same way I would do an image of my PC drive using an image software like Norton ghost or Acronis true image. Is this possible on android? I've been reading about Nandroid backup and I think this does what I want but the only way to do this with Nandroid is to root and install a new recovery correct? Am I not able to hook my phone up using the usb cable and use an app on the PC to clone the internal SD and create an image of it? I want to create an image of my phone with all its settings, contacts, txts, etc so i can have something to go back to if needed. I would like to do this before I root if possible.
2. On the Samsung Captivate section we have a wiki that has all the info you need to learn how to do certain things, mods, root, etc, etc. I found something similar for our Gnote2 here started by Mjwhirly http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1987541 but I could not find a section of removing bloatware. I saw the link that was created by mrRobinson and he mentions using De-Bloater app that will do it for you with oneclick but is there a list of all the safe to remove apps that I can go through so I can decided which apps I want to keep and which I want to remove?
thanks in advance

Yeah you got it right - a nandroid is what you want. I'm a big time user of ghost - it's the same thing and works great. Root and install the TWRP recovery. Then first of all make a nandroid of your old system. If you want to go back to it all you'll have to do is unroot, change the recovery back, and use triangle away to reset the flash counter and you'll be where you are now - bone stock. You can't make a nandroid image backup until you root and change the recovery though.
On the second question I'd just recommend you install a rom. I use Cleanrom. It is already debloated for you (though you have still some choices), as well as optimized in ways that will amaze you (does 2+ days on battery sound good?). If you look at the various roms available, you'll see more people are using Cleanrom than any other - that should tell you something! Jedi is also great. Many of the AOSP type roms seem to have some minor issues, but the devs are trying to do a much harder thing than just debloat and optimize a rom that was originally released for your device. Whichever one you decide to try, best thing to do is just read the whole rom thread in advance if you have time. You'll read all the dumb questions that others have already asked as well as learn all the ins and outs of the whole process. If you want to then try a different rom, make a nandroid and you can always come back to your previous working system. Hope this helps and have fun!

hey thanks a lot Dumbo53
I guess i'll just have to go ahead and root and do a nandroid backup. I have actually owned a captivate since it first came out which was my first android phone and i have never installed a custom rom. I always did everything manually like debloat and stuff. Security wise how safe are these roms, I see a lot of people just running around and flashing any rom that gets posted. What I'm trying to get at is do we know what's inside of these roms or do we just rely on the honor system and assume that they're safe, like can I trust these roms if I do my banking on them, which i am scared to do ever since I saw a message from the keyboard app on my captivate prompt about capturing my keystrokes or something, basically like a key logger, so I never did try to log onto any sites involving my banking or work email etc. but now that I have my note2 I want to be able to do all that stuff, like emails, banking, accessing my site for maintenance etc etc just for the instant access part of it instead of booting up my laptop or desktop... But I guess I can say the same thing about the stock rom too.

Your banking info is much more likely to be stolen off of a corporate website that got hacked. Whenever you use a credit card to buy something from a company or store, your number passes through some unknown employee's hands and gets stored in another database. Since millions of these numbers are stored together under sometimes weak security, these sites make much more tempting targets than your phone for thieves. The numbers are then sold off in blocks of thousands on the internet. Does that worry you enough to stop using a credit card?
However it is true that there could be a risk in installing a rom, or indeed any software on your phone. If it were discovered that a dev was putting malware in their mods or roms, I'm sure it would create quite a stir! I've never heard of this happening, though I have heard of shady stuff being done with mobile apps that you buy. All I can suggest you do is just read a lot more so that it is easier to distinguish between real threats and imaginary ones, and to learn how to protect yourself. In any case financial institutions have to protect their customers from a lot of these types of fraud, or they'd have trouble staying in business.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I317 using xda app-developers app

Sounds good. I'm just getting the chance to root and install TWRP been super busy with work so I haven't had the chance to do it. Now installing a recovery does not wipe data right? also on a different note I use both the play store and amazon app store. I have purchased a bunch of apps from amazon and most of them worked but there are a few that say my phone is not compatible. Like the need for speed games and asphalt games will not install from amazon. I haven't tried the same apps from play store but maybe I should. Oh one big one is autodesks sketchbook pro. I don't even see that option on the play store when searching using my phone but its there when i search on the pc. I purchased sketchbook mobile and that works but i needed the features that pro has so i purchased that through amazon again thinking that it would work. I thought this phone was basically a tablet, shouldn't these tablet apps work on our phones?