Android Backup & Restore

You’ve just gotten your shiny new Android Phone, and you want to migrate to it. There are several options, including Titanium Backup to move stuff, but Google also has you covered (party): Android Backup & Restore. You can find this setting on your phone, under “Settings” and “Backup & Restore”. This thing backups several things, but far from all:

• Your installed (Google Play) apps
• WiFi accesspoints & passwords (if this is a good thing, is another question)
• Certain application settings (this is application dependent)
• Probably more…

This feature is known to be a bit of a battery drainer, so many people leave it off by default. This is ofcourse a PITA when you want to move - as your phone won’t start backing up immediately after you tap the option.

Luckely, you can trigger this manually: you need to activate USB Debugging on your phone, and then start a new ADB shell with the command aplty called adb shell
Then you can play around with the backup manager, bmgr. In most cases you’ll just want to trigger a backup immediately: bmgr run
This will trigger the backup manager to run a backup, send all your stuff over to the cloud. Give it a few minutes, and then add your Google Account to your new phone, and presto - it’s all there. Sortof.

For a full overview what you can do with bmgr, see the android developer webpage.