Can we do a full backup of iPhone/iPad easily?

[peterpan123]

Hello, I use Samsung phone and tablet. Unless we root the devices, we cannot do a full backup. We can only backup some of the stuff through the Samsung Keis. How about iPhone and iPad? Can we do a full backup of the device? I mean if the device goes wrong or have everything erased for any reason, can we do a full recovery so that the device would be like it was before the problem occurred?

 

[TruthWatcher412]

iCloud backup does this. So when I went from my 6 plus to 6s plus, I restored from backup and my new iPhone was identical in settings and apps from the 6.

 

[silverblack]

iTunes backups everything to your computer, which is good if you don't have a lot of internet bandwidth. Just make sure you select to encrypt your backup to include all data.

 

[Shirasaki]

As I aware, even choosing encrypted backup, not all data are contained.

This is highly depend on how developer treat generated data.

I say this because I attempt to backup my phone to retrieve downloaded files in an app. I choose encrypting backup, but backup itself does not contain those downloaded files.

 

[thatanonymoususer]

In short: Yes. An iCloud or iTunes backup is a great way to get a full workable backup of your entire device. This is part of the reason why iPhone users don't have any issues with buying a new phone every year, and they don't loose a bunch of productivity when doing so. That being said, I've included some complexities that I've found below for veterans of the Apple crowd.

Here's the official document on what gets backed up: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204136

From my experience, Apple Pay(stored in the secure enclave), Watch Pairing, Bluetooth pairing, properly coded in-app purchases, and some app's log-ins aren't backed up, but other than that you can just backup and restore as much as you want. After iOS 9 and app thinning, Apps don't automatically back up anymore, but the data in the home directory of the app does.

Full App Backups:
If you want to restore apps when you restore from an iTunes backup instead of re-downloading them, you'll want to download them separately to iTunes using the App Store through iTunes. Downloading apps that are important to you is a great idea if you want to re-install an app that is no longer in the App Store. For instance, you can't find Hero of Sparta(1 2 or 3) in the App Store, but because I downloaded it to iTunes, I can still install it onto my iPhone as long as I use the same Apple ID as I used then.

If you want to do this automatically, set up automatic downloads through iTunes->Preferences->Store->Automatic Downloads-> and then check Apps. It can take up a lot of space on your computer, but when your favorite games get removed because a company doesn't want to support their game anymore, it's great to still have them. App developers get to control what you backup, so if you do a bunch of in-app purchases, and the app gets removed from the App Store, you don't get to have that purchased content back. If the game is still in the App Store, most games/apps have a restore purchases button to get your stuff back.

On exploring backups:
You can use some tools to explore iPhone backups. I'm currently using iExplorer, but there are a bunch of other ones that do pretty much the same thing. These tools let you explore parts of your backup like text messages, voice mails, etc so that you can back them up and then delete them off of your device if you feel so inclined.

Note on iOS Versions:
If you think that you'll want to eventually restore to an earlier backup with an earlier version of iOS (let's say you want to try out a beta), ALWAYS go to iTunes->Preferences->Devices and then right click on your backup and click archive. That backup won't be overwritten anymore. This is super important as you can't use a 9.1 backup if your device is on 9.0.2. You can restore to a 9.1 device from a 9.0.2 backup though.

 

[peterpan123]

With Samsung Keis, I could backup some stuffs such as photos. However, important handwritten notes I put on S-Note and and S Memo are not backed up. I heard that I need to root the device to do a full backup.

 

[thatanonymoususer]

Photos can be imported with most photo apps, and notes are a part of iCloud, so they are synced to any device logged into your iCloud.

S-Note and S-Memo can by synced to Evernote(S-Note) or transferred to to Evernote (S-Memo) if you want a platform-agnostic backup of your notes.

You don't need to be root to backup Android devices, but Android tends to rely more on server-side(Cloud) services to backup things like photos while Apple tends to prefer device-side services. Also, since each Android flavor is slightly different, a backup made on one device might not work as well for another device. An iPhone complete backup and restore works well since you know quite a lot about the system you will restore to as you're making the backup.

 

[peterpan123]

Photos can be imported with most photo apps, and notes are a part of iCloud, so they are synced to any device logged into your iCloud.

S-Note and S-Memo can by synced to Evernote(S-Note) or transferred to to Evernote (S-Memo) if you want a platform-agnostic backup of your notes.

You don't need to be root to backup Android devices, but Android tends to rely more on server-side(Cloud) services to backup things like photos while Apple tends to prefer device-side services. Also, since each Android flavor is slightly different, a backup made on one device might not work as well for another device. An iPhone complete backup and restore works well since you know quite a lot about the system you will restore to as you're making the backup.

As far as I recall, even I backed up my Galaxy Note devices, some of the settings were not backed up.

Will these be backed up if I use iCloud? Am I right that using iCloud to backup the iPhone, I could restore it to any new iPhone to make it as if it were my current one?

If that is the case, the remaining thing that I will miss for not using an Android device is a good stylus such as the S pen.

 

[nebo1ss]

I am going to have to check this again but I seem to remember when doing a restore not everything is restored and an automatic sync with the computer is done to get things like music, photos etc.

In fact if you think about it my phone has 60Gig of data and my back up is about 3 Gig so there is no way that it has everything.

 

[Phil A.]

When I upgraded to my 6S Plus, I restored it from the iCloud backup of my 6.

The only thing I had to do after that was re-enter my password in a couple of apps - everything else was exactly like it had been on my 6.

The backup doesn't include apps (but does include app settings) - it re-downloads them from the App store and restores their settings. It also doesn't include photos that are stored in iCloud Photo Library or music from iCloud music library as they're available from iCloud. If you don't have iCloud photos then your camera roll is backed up, and if you sync photos and music from iTunes then you'll need to do a sync after

As @thatanonymoususer says - if you have apps that are no longer available in the store, you'll need to download them to a computer and you can then sync

 

[peterpan123]

Has anybody used both Android devices (Galaxy Note series better) and iPhone/iPad? How is the backup experience?

Do what you guys/ladies mentioned also apply to iPad PRO?