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Comment by K7PJP | Hacker News Reader

> Last time I had an Apple device the only way to backup was plugging it into a desktop with iTunes.

Apple's supported full iCloud backups and over-the-air restore for at least 11 years, maybe 13 years.

Yeah, I would have figured. My actual question is how is Google's backup lacking?

It backs up... Photos, basically? With an iPhone you can take a complete image of the device, and never lose a file again. With Android, solid chance you'll never migrate to a new phone and not lose stuff. It's such a fucking shitty thing that doesn't need to be.

I've gone through like 5 Android phones back to back. Photos, documents, emails, installed apps, contacts... It's all seamless and works, literally just with Google's defaults.

What do you think you lose?

App data. Play store simply reinstalls the apps but they're in a clean state. Some apps supposedly back up and restore their data from Google cloud but that's rare.

Honestly, I can't think of a single app that doesn't back up its own data. Meta apps have their own backup mechanism, games all backup either through their own servers or Play Games service, pretty much everything I use is a service of some sort.

But yeah, I guess Google isn't backing up the state of the offline chess app I downloaded 10 years ago...

It's nice that you don't have this problem with the apps that you use, but others do.

Can you give an example? An app that doesn't back up data that's essential to you?

Not the same person, but this affects me and I can explain. I have around a hundred apps installed, and use them just frequently enough to keep them around. All of them can sync their data back to a new device without issue.

The problem is that when a new or wiped device installs those apps again, they won't have any of their account or configuration data. Even with a password manager to help, logging back in and configuring my preferences is a tedious, all-day affair. In years past, there were ways to transfer account data, but they stopped working a long time ago. I am eager to find a solution to this that works without root and on modern Android.

to be clear Apple's "full" icloud backup is full in name only. if you get a new iphone and do a backup and restore, expect to spend several more hours setting up various apps and details on your new device. you'll have to log in to your apps on the new device and setup things there if the app doesn't work with iCloud's backup mechanism.

it might be better than android's backup system, but it still leaves a lot to be desired.

Yep, Signal is not backed up via iCloud for example

It's a feature, not a bug. Apps like banks or Signal don't want to get backed up as it's a security risk if someone could just duplicate the authentication.

The owner of a phone should be able to back up all of the data on it, regardless of the wishes of anyone who doesn't own said phone.

I don't disagree, but I vote with my wallet. If the owner of the phone doesn't agree with that, they could stop using the phone/apps. Similarly the biometric data also doesn't get backed up or transferred over to a new phone. That's a product decision and I'm just explaining why things are done that way on iOS.

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