Many apps opt out of including their state in "adb backup" or act oddly when restored. Maybe this changed in the past few years, but it is still nowhere as complete as any automated or manual iOS backup.
I tried to use adb backup to backup my Chrome history/tabs, but it's empty because it has android:allowBackup=false. So unless they're also rooting the phone (which usually wipes the data) or have some 0-day privilege escalations, some apps can't be backed up this way.
Even adb backup isn't possible: it's been deprecated for years and I've never ever gotten it to work even with root and the right dev settings.
It starts creating an image of a couple of GB (takes a couple of hours, lol) and then just bugs out and stops. There's no error checking or anything and when it bugs out it means you have start all over again.
It would be nice if Google made adb backup more robust and offered an OFFLINE DESKTOP backup tool for ALL apps.
That's something I enjoyed on the iPhone using iTunes (well now you can't backup apps anymore because of app thinning). Connecting a device, then waiting on the magic cloud to finish restoring and not knowing which apps and what data will even get restored is just moronic.
It's not a coincidence that the most popular app on the Play Store since ages which uses root is Titanium Backup.
You cannot even backup all of the playstore apps, tons and tons set the magic "don't backup" bit.
You are totally right in that there are basically no useful backups on android whatsoever. The closest thing is "adb backup" when you have root and developer settings enabled, which is saying a lot.
> Android does not allow you to take complete backups. Let alone "built-in".
Android has had full system backup capabilities through `adb backup` for years. It does not require removing carrier locks or rooting and has been available since Android 2.x iirc.
I've used this to transfer all of my apps, app settings, and system settings between all of my Android phones:
Nexus One -> Galaxy Nexus -> Note 3 -> Galaxy S6 -> Galaxy S8 -> Galaxy S9 -> Galaxy S10 -> Z Fold 2, all with one continuous chain of backup and restores via `adb backup` and `adb restore`.
These restores sometimes even worked flawlessly across different Android OS versions! Sometimes this has caused a lot of weird issues wrt system settings, so admittedly this process can be quite buggy.
That doesn't work for Google Authenticator. Apps can opt-out of being able to be backed up, which even prevents adb/helium backups (unless you're rooted).
have you tried restoring your adb backup?
Most apps set the backup=false flag in thr android manifest and adb will sput out an empty backup. This is what grandparents meant.
"There are plenty of backup tools available on the internet, this isn't really a problem with Android"
Name one and describe the process. So far everything I have tried takes hours and often loses a bunch of settings that need to be restored manually. It requires significant amounts of work. Also it seems most tools need a rooted phone
It is a shame Adb backup is being deprecated. Even twrp now only works on some devices. Titanium backup has not been updated in so long, it still requires root and doesn't backup full data for all apps anyway.
I have been trying out seedvault which is like google backup but you can back up to cloud or (although i see even that is am issue on your samsung as it won't load usb keys). And for full app data backup oandbackupx, which is excellent but still requires root for full backup.
Ultimately, the only solution here is to never buy samsung android devices.
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