Ever had to resort to resetting your Android device, wiping all your data in the process? Or perhaps simply had to migrate from your old, aging Android, to a new, sleeker one? Despite what the internet says, it's actually not a painful process – it's exceedingly easy to do it. The pain comes afterwards, when you realize that your first texts with a loved one are gone, your call logs are wiped and that new client with an important inquiry never made it into your contacts list. The pain comes when you fire up your favorite game and see that due to one reason or another, the developer didn’t deem it worth the coding time to attach all your hard-earned power-ups to your account, and your progress is gone. The worst thing about backups is that you usually forget to backup at least one thing, and you never actually know what until it is too late. In this guide, we'll show you how to backup your app data, your texts, your call logs and even your keyboard's word predictions – some of the simplest, most essential stuff that can easily ruin your week, should they end up missing the boat.
1. Step 1
No pesky rooting is required for this guide, just as it should be – simple and straightforward. We'll start with backing up your device's app data and your database of next-word typing predictions, using Koushik's Helium app (previously known as Carbon). As soon as you download Helium (over here), and power it up, you'll be asked to connect your Android phone with your PC via a microUSB cable.
2. Step 2
Once connected, Helium will ask you to enable USB Debugging from Developers Options if you haven't already. Enable USB Debugging by going to Settings > About Phone > Locate 'Build Number' and tap it 7 times.
3. Step 3
Once done, go to developer options and enable USB debugging. Accept the RSA key fingerprint request from your computer, as shown.
4. Step 4
Next up, Helium will ask you to launch Helium for Desktop. Download it from here, and follow the simple install instructions. Open Helium for Desktop once the installation is done. It'll recognize your device (if not download the Android Windows drivers from here), and you can now back-up your stuff.
5. Step 5
Simply click the little blue square at your bottom left and select as many or as little apps as you want. The Messaging storage, and predictive text database are on top. Click backup and choose internal storage (backup to Cloud requires the paid version of the app). That's it.
6. Step 6
It's best that you keep a copy of your backups on your computer, which is easily done by enabling 'PC Download' in the Helium app, available from the triple dot button on the top right. It'll assign a specific IP address that you can then access via your computer's browser, granted you're on the same network. Alternatively, just use a file explorer and upload to your favorite cloud service manually.
7. Step 7
Alright, it's time to back up all our text messages. This is super easy, thanks to a great small app that you can download from here. It's as simple as clicking a few buttons, as shown to your left. Pay attention where your backups go, and its best to rename them, as you should then get a copy on your PC or in the cloud, in case you do a full data cloud. Restoring them afterwards is as simple as re-installing the app on your fresh device and pointing to the location of your backup .xml file.
8. Step 8
With texts out of the way, it's time to backup your call log. This is done with a very similar app, available fromhere. The procedure is completely identical to the one in the last slight, as the two apps are visually and functionally the same. Once again, pay attention to the file-name and locate it with a file explorer app afterwards in order to get a copy on your PC or in the cloud.
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