Not sure if I misunderstood what a full adb backup is

[Courtney Alan White]

Hi, I did a simple console command in adb app control to create a backup.ab file that I THOUGHT had my full phone contents, from pictures to app data and everything

When I finally got this tool to work, I was presented with a measly selection of a few random app data's, nowhere close to my full library. I thought this was gonna take like an iso image of my phone, a complete replica of the internal file structure

What I got doesnt seem to be the case. Can you guys verify that I either did something wrong or I just need to do something different. The big problem is I wiped the phone to factory settings and ebayed it so all the data is gone for good except whats in samsung cloud.

Basically my main goal was to get a few select apps to retain their data, for example I have custom alarms for AMDroid alarm clock app saved that are pretty complex and hard to reproduce. In addition I use Tasker to automate a bunch of stuff around my house with NFC tags and I dont feel like doing that all over. if I did everything right, the only contents were like 8 apps and it doesnt look like the actual files that were on the phone memory.

[dragomerlin]

adb backups are nowhere near a ISO/raw/dd/1:1/clone/mirror/backup/savestate of an android phone. Only very few apps and its data gets actually backed up. Adb backups are actually partial backups with the strongest boundaries.

The adb backup was intended initially to backup only user apps and data (probably all in good faith), but as time went on, it got neglected, because Google didn't have the courage to fully remove it but didn't want people to use it either.

You see, there are reasons for that:

• App developers don't want people randomly accessing the phone's filesystem or spying communications or reverse engineering APIs or doing hacky things. Sometimes due to proprietary source code (system executables, IMEI/MAC information, saved WiFi networks).
• Other times because of privacy (certain messaging apps or banking apps don't allow to take a screenshot while open) or export to a new device, you have to reconfigure everything as new for each new device, re-enter credential, reconfigure notifications, etc.
• Other times because the content that the app uses is not theirs, so they have to forbid any manipulation. It includes Spotify music, Netflix movies, Youtube/Twitch/Facebook cached pictures and videos, and so on. Content with over the legal age only, with Parental Advisory, or restricted to certain countries or communities for whatever political / technological reason.
• Google wants everybody to use Google One instead. Check if you did backup to it, it's possible you have there most of the things you want.
• Devices firmware includes proprietary/licensed/patented/NDA software and drivers from third parties that the vendor (Samsung, whatever) can't redistribute, hence don't allow any backup of it.
• Devices vary too much from one another to have a standard backup scheme, and corporations are not keen to reach agreements on specifications. Sometimes they even enforce being incompatible to have the upper hand.

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Since iOS 9 Apple doesn't allow to backups apps (.ipa) to local backups, so you have to reinstall them from the Apple Store, so you see a common denominator here: everything is moving to cloud.

It's clear that Android should strongly warn users in the screen dialog how it works exactly (kind of Terms & Conditions), but actually most people don't backup anything. Social networks store everything on remote anyway and the same for media streaming, so almost nobody cares.

But the worst thing is that you made a serious mistake: you should have kept the old phone untouched, until you could confirm that the new device had everything to your liking, specially when the devices are managed by an external organization.

The only way to do a ISO/carbon copy backup of any smartphone, is to root it. Of course you need the new smartphone to be rooted to restore things. Otherwise backups are partial (very) and eventually will most disappear.

I'm so sorry that you were caught off guard so much, but the issue has been known for more than 10 years, and people that expect smartphones to be like desktop computers get so disappointed.

I'll add some uppercase warnings to the README with some legal advisory at the top to force feed people when they reach this project. Most issues reported come from the fact that they don't know what the terms of use of their devices are. Even some device manufacturers implemented their own variations of the adb format which is not compatible with the official one.