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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
ADB is also much less flexible. I have Titanium Backup making nightly backups, and then FolderSync automatically pushes them to a SFTP server I run. If something should happen to my phone, I'll lose one day of data. This is all automatic, so I don't have to think about it.
A backup like ADB that requires manual intervention is likely to be only done irregularly, and Murphy says that you'll lose your phone just after forgetting to make a backup for weeks.
Being able to do this is the only reason I bother to root my Android.
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.
Still trying to find a functional tool that makes it easy to take full backups and restore them to android devices since adb deprecated the "backup" command
The problem is that a full backup on Android requires root, which breaks a lot of security guarantees and isn't even always possible. As far as I'm aware, there is no possible way for me to backup my non-rooted phone, wipe it and restore is as if nothing happened.
Plenty of apps can't be backed up (Google's TOTP App for example), at least in my experience, recovering from Android's native backup is just as good as dumping your SD card and having sync setup for applications that support it, which isn't a lot.
Adb has a backup function you can use to download an apps data. I assume there is a reciprocal function to restore, but I've never used it.
The confirmation dialog that comes up on the phone looks like it is intended as an end user backup feature, but I've never seen a way to do it without enabling developer mode.
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