Anyone recommend a cheap/free utility to backup Android phone to PC

[Lil'John]

Title is it.

Long:
My 8 year old phone is finally calling it quits... I've dealt with cracked screen for close to 2 years. Saturday, it gave me a 'non-functional' scare so I am going to buy something not through a major vendor with a box store. I'm probably swapping carriers also(Puretalk)

I want to back up contacts, texts, galleries, settings(if possible) etc. Pictures and galleries I can do 'by hand' with a USB connection to my PC.

I believe there is some sort of cloud backup but I've got trust issues as well as I don't want to deal with the slow speed. My PC is Win11.

Can someone recommend me a program to back all that up to my PC?

 

[Provience]

Windows has a built in phone link thing, have you tried that?

 

[Lil'John]

Windows has a built in phone link thing, have you tried that?

I will see what I can find. I didn't know that.

 

[bgaidan]

If you buy another android phone, you can likely migrate the old right over to the new directly.


Contacts and photos should automatically sync to your gmail account. Just login to contacts.google.com and photos.google.com to make sure they are there. Settings - there's really not much you can back and and restore to a new phone so I wouldn't worry about it.

Texts - I use this app - SMS Backup & Restore - Apps on Google Play
It backs up locally to the phone and you can set it to upload to google drive or an ftp site, or you can just plug the phone in to your computer and copy the backup files over. I have mine set to backup and upload to drive every night.

 

[Lil'John]

<snip>
I believe there is some sort of cloud backup but I've got trust issues as well as I don't want to deal with the slow speed. My PC is Win11.

Contacts and photos should automatically sync to your gmail account. Just login to contacts.google.com and photos.google.com to make sure they are there. Settings - there's really not much you can back and and restore to a new phone so I wouldn't worry about it.

See above... unless the contacts and photos are all stored locally on my PC during the sync process, I have zero desire to deal with it.

Texts - I use this app - SMS Backup & Restore - Apps on Google Play
It backs up locally to the phone and you can set it to upload to google drive or an ftp site, or you can just plug the phone in to your computer and copy the backup files over. I have mine set to backup and upload to drive every night.

I will take a look at this. Seems promising.

 

[dntsdad]

Slide down top to bottom and go to the setting and the Windows link is in there. Well, on my S21 it is

Im pretty sure when I upgraded from my S8, it was a direct USBC between phones and all the data migrated that way. Can't remember if it was app that drove it or what.

 

[Motorcharge]

Windows has a built in phone link thing, have you tried that?

It's a buggy pile of shit with pretty limited functionality. It's basically just an app to let you use your phone through your computer, I don't think it has any kind of back up stuff built into it. May be able to import contacts from it though.

 

[Provience]

It's a buggy pile of shit with pretty limited functionality. It's basically just an app to let you use your phone through your computer, I don't think it has any kind of back up stuff built into it. May be able to import contacts from it though.

Ah, I've only used it to send text messages about things for sale from the computer

 

[92 s dime]

Samsung already has a good program called Smart Switch
Get the new phone,follow the instructions and it copies everything over via usb or wifi
Certain programs like whatsapp you need to backup in the program itself

 

[spork]

Last time I replaced my phone it pulled in all my contacts/pictures/text messages from the old phone cloud backup. I'd get the new phone and see what is there before you worry about involving a Windows 11 PC...

I bought this one if you're looking for something affordable and decent

Amazon.com

 

[dntsdad]

Samsung already has a good program called Smart Switch
Get the new phone,follow the instructions and it copies everything over via usb or wifi
Certain programs like whatsapp you need to backup in the program itself

YEP. That is the one I was thinking of. I don't Whatsapp so everything just worked for me.

 

[Mountain-Dweller]

Been available in Windows for many versions back to Windows 7....

Plug in USB connection to phone, then select File transfer

Then at your computer use the file manager to get files like pictures, videos, files, etc...

Browse and copy what you need,,,,

For Contacts use Google services built in to transfer those, Or send yourself "Contact Cards" to move them

On Android usually all your pictures are in DCIM / Camera

I prefer this method over the smartphone apps that transfer everything, because I don't want to transfer everything....
Inevitably the App transfers things I don't want and adds clutter to New Smartphone.

 

[ScottRS]

"Smart switch" and "copy my data" are both good, free, and will move your stuff from old phone to new fairly easily. They do tend to try to migrate old apps no longer supported though, so a little cleanup is still needed.
I pretty much only copy pictures to laptop, everything else can migrate via cloud/Gmail as far as I'm concerned.
In my case, pictures, movies, etc., are on the SD card so moving that is easy (getting harder as more phones are ditching SD cards entirely).

 

[Motorcharge]

Ah, I've only used it to send text messages about things for sale from the computer

Do yourself a favor and just go to messages.android.com. Scan the QR code and you'll sync with your phone. It's basically the same UI as what's on the phone already and none of Microsoft's bullshit. Plus you're not letting MS harvest and sell data directly off your phone for no reason.

 

[Lil'John]

Bringing this back from the grave now that I've got a phone in hand and FUCK Android for not making this easy

Old phone is geriatric Android 8.0.0 New phone is 13.x

I tried the Google One back up on the old phone and it claims all my old shit is backed up.

When I put simcard in new phone and powered it up, it did a half assed bluetooth/wifi since with the old phone. It appears that photos and apps only came across.

I've tried to access Google One to pull the contacts, texts, call history, etc across. And so far, nowhere on the new phone is the option to restore any of those from Google One.

So what am I doing wrong with these pieces of shit? While I like tech, this kind of retarded coders forcing things nobody asked for on people is why I don't upgrade/update often.

Mountain-Dweller Thank you VERY much for taking the time to detail that out. Sadly, that does transfer the stuff that for me is important: call history, contacts, and texts. My photos are on external SD and I don't use my phone for much more than calls, texts, occasional photos, and a little bit of web browsing. No ringtones, videos, music, etc.

 

[Mountain-Dweller]

I tried the Google One back up on the old phone and it claims all my old shit is backed up.


I've tried to access Google One to pull the contacts, texts, call history, etc across. And so far, nowhere on the new phone is the option to restore any of those from Google One.

Are you using the exact same gmail account on new phone?

 

[AKnate]

Plus it saves in some magic clouds. Least mine does.

Samsung already has a good program called Smart Switch
Get the new phone,follow the instructions and it copies everything over via usb or wifi
Certain programs like whatsapp you need to backup in the program itself

.

 

[Lil'John]

Are you using the exact same gmail account on new phone?

Yes, I was using same(only) gmail account. I can see I have something in google shit cloud but it won't let me 'restore' from it.

I went ahead and paid $50 for Wondershare MobileTransfer... hard to tell if it fully worked but I'm at least 50% there; I've got my call history and contacts across. I can't find my calendar data and it sounds like I need to fully activate the new phone to see my texts. Seems like there are dozens of SMS apps and it is a pain in the ass so far to shuffle things around.

I can't find the plain jane photo gallery I had. I have zero desire for all the bullshit the 'default' on the phone.

 

[PAE]

What pops up when you plug in a charge cord to the computers USB port ?

 

[Mountain-Dweller]

What pops up when you plug in a charge cord to the computers USB port ?

It has a Pop-Up that says "PAE needs to read at least 4 posts up, if not the entire thread"

 

[trampas]

It has a Pop-Up that says "PAE needs to read at least 4 posts up, if not the entire thread"

 

[JD Miller]

Your screen name is Tampon ?


.

 

[AKnate]

Bringing this back from the grave now that I've got a phone in hand and FUCK Android for not making this easy

Old phone is geriatric Android 8.0.0 New phone is 13.x

I tried the Google One back up on the old phone and it claims all my old shit is backed up.

When I put simcard in new phone and powered it up, it did a half assed bluetooth/wifi since with the old phone. It appears that photos and apps only came across.

I've tried to access Google One to pull the contacts, texts, call history, etc across. And so far, nowhere on the new phone is the option to restore any of those from Google One.

So what am I doing wrong with these pieces of shit? While I like tech, this kind of retarded coders forcing things nobody asked for on people is why I don't upgrade/update often.

Mountain-Dweller Thank you VERY much for taking the time to detail that out. Sadly, that does transfer the stuff that for me is important: call history, contacts, and texts. My photos are on external SD and I don't use my phone for much more than calls, texts, occasional photos, and a little bit of web browsing. No ringtones, videos, music, etc.

Grave?

Was started last week.

 

[Will Scarlet]

If you put a little work in to setup on your local computer, NextCloud would probably fit the bill:

Nextcloud - Open source content collaboration platform

The most popular open source content collaboration platform for tens of millions of users at thousands of organizations across the globe

nextcloud.com

There's an Android client. And then add something like seedvault to the mix for application backup:

GitHub - seedvault-app/seedvault: A backup application for the Android Open Source Project.

A backup application for the Android Open Source Project. - seedvault-app/seedvault

github.com

Good luck...

 

[Roc Doc]

Bringing this back from the grave now that I've got a phone in hand and FUCK Android for not making this easy

Old phone is geriatric Android 8.0.0 New phone is 13.x

I tried the Google One back up on the old phone and it claims all my old shit is backed up.

When I put simcard in new phone and powered it up, it did a half assed bluetooth/wifi since with the old phone. It appears that photos and apps only came across.

I've tried to access Google One to pull the contacts, texts, call history, etc across. And so far, nowhere on the new phone is the option to restore any of those from Google One.

So what am I doing wrong with these pieces of shit? While I like tech, this kind of retarded coders forcing things nobody asked for on people is why I don't upgrade/update often.

Mountain-Dweller Thank you VERY much for taking the time to detail that out. Sadly, that does transfer the stuff that for me is important: call history, contacts, and texts. My photos are on external SD and I don't use my phone for much more than calls, texts, occasional photos, and a little bit of web browsing. No ringtones, videos, music, etc.

I just went from a LG Android 9, to a Motorola Android 13, and all my apps came across, except Strelok because the author is Russian. I didn't get the text threads, but all my contacts came across just fine.

 

[trampas]

I just went from a LG Android 9, to a Motorola Android 13, and all my apps came across, except Strelok because the author is Russian. I didn't get the text threads, but all my contacts came across just fine.

Text threads woulda been nice, eh?

 

[Roc Doc]

Text threads woulda been nice, eh?

Yeah, that doesn't seem like data that would have been stored locally, since PoPo subpoena that shit all the time from the various carriers.

 

[bgaidan]

I just went from a LG Android 9, to a Motorola Android 13, and all my apps came across, except Strelok because the author is Russian. I didn't get the text threads, but all my contacts came across just fine.

Text threads woulda been nice, eh?

If you buy another android phone, you can likely migrate the old right over to the new directly.


Contacts and photos should automatically sync to your gmail account. Just login to contacts.google.com and photos.google.com to make sure they are there. Settings - there's really not much you can back and and restore to a new phone so I wouldn't worry about it.

Texts - I use this app - SMS Backup & Restore - Apps on Google Play
It backs up locally to the phone and you can set it to upload to google drive or an ftp site, or you can just plug the phone in to your computer and copy the backup files over. I have mine set to backup and upload to drive every night.

Seriously. Try it out. Set up at least a weekly backup to a spare gmail/drive account so you don't clog your regular one up with backups. If you care about saving old texts, it's the easiest way to make sure you never lose them.