OT: Android Phone Backup NOT To Google Cloud Question

Home » CentOS » OT: Android Phone Backup NOT To Google Cloud Question
CentOS 4 Comments

Dear All,

My apologies for OT question.

I wonder if someone of Android smartphone owners backs up their device and user/application data NOT to google cloud.

I just had to get new smartphone, and discovered that short of rooting device or unlocking bootloader and flashing one of “un-googled” android builds I can not find the way to back up everything. To my storage, NOT
TO GOOGLE CLOUD that is. adb lets me back up system and applications
(and data on add-on flash card), but not application data stored in internal storage (say, off-line maps downloaded by offline map application).


I knew when buying android (“gogloid”) I’m not becoming an owner of the device. I also know that after flashing one of “un-googled” systems
(waiving off the warranty on that device) I will not get rid of all google code. There is proprietary chunk of it the android kernel… Plus proprietary drivers (“blobs” is the word android people use if I’m not mistaken). I also have seen google “appliances” on several “big” (say, class B) networks, not registered in DNS, carrying non-routable
(“private address space”) IP addresses, which are resolved as google by DNS servers provided to DHCP clients inside these networks… So, no, I
have no illusion about getting away from almighty big brother.

I just want my data backed up to my device, accessible to me and usable for recovery without need of network access, and existence of some third party servers on the network.

I know, Apple iDevices are a bit better data wise, and Apple has [quite]
a bit better reputation, though these are still Apple devices, not yours ;-)

Any advise, anybody?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Valeri

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

4 thoughts on - OT: Android Phone Backup NOT To Google Cloud Question

  • no problem, host your own nextcloud and get the nextcloud app;
    also no need of having the contacts and/or calendar at google …

    and the most important: you can select by this criteria; other things like camera, … are less important, its a phone …

    if better means overpriced then you are right;
    good androids are for less then 200 usd, iPhones start at 500 usd

  • Thanks, Walter. I do host our own: owncloud (the one nextcloud forked off), and I do have my important data synced through it.

    There are though on android device applications that you can not configure to store data in different location from what programmer programed in. These go to /data/data on android, and I can do nothing about these. Say, if I want that place to be inside what ownclud
    (nextcloud) syncs, permissions of android system will stop me from accessing it on the device anyway. Overcoming which will need rooting the system. Dough.

    Thanks anyway!

    There may be yet even more “overpriced” device available some day:

    https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

    which has no proprietary code in it whatsoever, and being divorced from big brother (with uncounted and unaccounted for taxpayers money), it definitely costs what it costs to be built for small consumer base and without portion of cost covered by some other parties… Anyway, Apple device gives cost of its built for big consumer base without portion of cost covered by other interested parties… In other words, the old truth stands: you pay anyway (if not money, then by something else).

    Valeri

    —
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  • I’m not sure if you would get all data, but wouldn’t something like mounting the phone with simple-mtpfs and then rsyncing it to a directory on your machine (then moving it elsewhere if desired) serve the purpose. Actually, I think even if you back it all up to the cloud, if you have to restore, there will always be something missing.

    For example, I recently got a phone running Android 9 and though it had copied some custom ringtones, it didn’t see them. I had to re-encode them specifying a bitrate to get it working.

    Whether Apple or Google, they seem to make it harder to keep control over your device with each iteration. I think it was Corey Doctorow who once wrote something like, No one ever woke up and said, Gee I hope there’s an iTunes update that will let me do less with my device.

    But I digress. Assuming this is all data which can be seen by a computer, something like simple-mtpfs would let you copy it all to your hard drive.

  • Walter H. wrote:
    Um, Valeri,

    About iphones…

    Excerpt:
    An anonymous reader writes:
    A recent vulnerability in WhatsApp shows that there’s little defenders can do to detect and analyze iPhone hacks. Some iOS security experts say this is yet another incident that shows iOS is so locked down it’s hard — if not impossible — to figure out if your own iPhone has been hacked.

    […] “The simple reality is there are so many 0-day exploits for iOS,”
    said Stefan Esser, a security researcher that specializes in iOS. “And the only reason why just a few attacks have been caught in the wild is that iOS phones by design hinder defenders to inspect the phones.” As of today, there is no specific tool that an iPhone user can download to analyze their phone and figure out if it has been compromised. In 2016, Apple took down an app made by Esser that was specifically designed to detect malicious jailbreaks.
    — end excerpt –