I would like to move data (messages, contacts, maybe apps etc.) from a Fairphone 1 to Fairphone 2. Both are running Fairphone Open with F-Droid. Another topic suggested to use “Titanium Backup” but that is not available from F-Droid.
I found that my Fairphone 1 has a backup and recover utility that stores data and apps onto the SD-card. It makes a directory “backup” in the root of the filesystem with respective directories for data and apps. The data backup gets a proper timestamped subdirectory. When I remove the SD-card from the Fairphone 1 to Fairphone 2, I looked for the same backup and recovery utility, but I could not find it installed nor on F-Droid. In the settings there is a thing called “Backup & reset”, but no option to restore from the backup.
My second guess was using oandbackup, but I does not want to install on Fairphone 1.
Does anyone have an idea how to do this simply with free software?
It is not free software, but on it’s website you can download the apk, so at least you don’t need to send data to Google to use the app.
Do you get an error message or is just nothing happening?
If it’s just a compatibility issue you could try downloading an older version. If none of the available versions work you could even enable “F-Droid archive” in the “repository” section of the F-Droid settings, then more older versions should be available.
Maybe most of the apps you want to backup the data for have an export feature anyway?
Actually I don’t believe it’s that simple to transfer your personal settings (don’t mean personal data) from FP1 to FP2.
You may install the same apps on FP2 as you have on FP1 by downloading them again from an app store like F-Droid, Aurora, Yalp etc. or pack the installed app back into an .apk by using e.g. app backup. for not having to look up each app online again. No root access needed but only generates the plain installable .apk without you personal settings.
But if wanting to transfer your settings I disbelieve it will be so easy. You could generate a backup of your settings if you manage to find them. But if recovering them on FP2 will bring the expected results I have doubts. If things go bad the phone may simply crash.
(could work with root access and a file manager)
This is not Windows from where you may know such mechanisms.
An export function per app may be the best but time intense option if available.
Yeah, backup/restore is notoriously bad on Android. Show this thread to an iPhone user, and they wouldn’t understand the problem. For them both apps and settings are backed up automatically. For Android, we need to be engineers and have lots of time on our hands.
I wonder why this still hasn’t been addressed in Android development. Any ideas?
Hello, maybe your problem is already solved, but you could copy data from a FP1 to a FP2 by installing the free app ‘copy my data’ from the app store. You have to run it on both phones; it worked perfectly in my situation.
Unfortunately I was not able to restore my whatsapp history on my new phone, so I started all over again, which worked therapeutical after all…
oandbackup gave some issues. Without going into details right now, I think that the program is mostly for backing up and restoring on a single phone (or from/to an identical phone). When I’m lucky, I get to restore data from an app from FP1 to FP2 (and only if I already manually installed that app on FP2).
Copy My Data is not free software (I think—I usually cannot find the user’s permissions for an app on Google Play Store). Maybe it would copy some malware into my data as well.
I gave up for now. As I still have both phones, I’m just exporting/importing apps slowly one by one. I already did Contacts. If some app data that cannot be exported are important enough, I’ll dig into the filesystem and copy them manually, though I’m not sure if that is even always possible.
