Android backup fail (and other stupid bugs)



  • Everyone knows Google has been one of the major pushers of storing everything in the cloud. That's why they give people 15 GB of storage for free, develop lots of free services that run the browser, sell Chromebooks that store everything online, etc.

    And of course, their most important OS, Android, couldn't stay behind. The system stores, by default, a copy of your system settings in your Google account, as well as the data of all your applications, so if you lose your device or switch to a new one, all the old apps get installed and everything is seamlessly transferred.

    ...except that does not happen at all. The configuration backup sometimes gets restored and sometimes doesn't, with no clear pattern on how it's decided, and there's NO FUCKING USER INTERFACE TO CONTROL THAT. And the app data does not seem to be backed up at all.

    :wtf: are you doing Google?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    3rd party app data has never been backed up on Android. Or if it has, it's never actually worked on restore.



  • Oh, related WTF:

    1. Apparently there's no way to remove devices from that list. Ever.
    2. See that "Edit" menu on the side? It seems to do... nothing at all. :wtf:?

  • FoxDev

    @loopback0 said:

    3rd party app data has never been backed up on Android. Or if it has, it's never actually worked on restore.

    Depends on the app; I had to wipe my Nexus 7 a while back, and while I've not reinstalled many apps, the few I have do seem to have had their data restored after I installed them. But then they were games, so they may have used a different mechanism.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Odd. I've never had a single game, or other 3rd party app, restore any settings except for the games that stored their own settings themselves in their own cloudy fashion.

    I did, 3/4 years back, have it where I skipped the restore initially on a new phone and then it synced back that I had no apps installed and wiped out the list of apps to restore, so when I tried later it installed nothing. :facepalm:
    It seems less stupid now, especially since Android 5 gives the option to use NFC and an existing device.


  • FoxDev

    @loopback0 said:

    games that stored their own settings themselves in their own cloudy fashion.

    Ah, that's probably what they're doing then 😄


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @RaceProUK said:

    Ah, that's probably what they're doing then 😄

    Confusingly, they might be using Google's cloud offering to do just that.


  • :belt_onion:

    FWIW, the restore functionality is much better on 5.0+. Before that it was utter crap.



  • I think it would actually be less confusing if apps simply synced their data on a special folder of Google Drive.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    1. The official method of removing a device is literally not allowing it to connect to the internet (or at least, use your Google account in any way shape or form. This is very difficult, unless you manage to corrupt your Google Play Services database). After about a month Google just figures that you don't have that device any more, and removes it.
      Found this out the hard way when I tried to purchase a new app and couldn't get it delivered to my phone, due to said Google Play Services being defunct (I disabled it because it was freezing the SystemUI every five seconds for thirty seconds).
    2. I'm pretty sure the Edit button is specifically to show you (through googleAdServicies) a text box to edit the NickName of the device. If you happen to be blocking ads, it doesn't work? Then again, Advertisements to change your device ID :wtf:

    Addendum to 2: Well, technically it's not loading the edit code from advertisements, but if the payments ad fails to load it causes an JS exception, which breaks the rest of the page. For some reason.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Tsaukpaetra said:

    The official method of removing a device is literally not allowing it to connect to the internet (or at least, use your Google account in any way shape or form. This is very difficult, unless you manage to corrupt your Google Play Services database). After about a month Google just figures that you don't have that device any more, and removes it.

    I have a device in the list that's not been online for two years.



  • @loopback0 said:

    @Tsaukpaetra said:
    After about a month Google just figures that you don't have that device any more, and removes it.

    I have a device in the list that's not been online for two years.

    This is not an uncommon problem. There's a game mod site that I know of that does not allow you to delete your account, nor will they do it for you. The official procedure is to delete everything you ever posted, go away, and never log in again; after 6 months or so, maybe it will get deleted the next time they purge inactive accounts. (The problem is, the only way to find out whether it has been deleted is to try to log in. If you fail, it's been deleted, but if you succeed, there goes your 6 months of inactivity.)


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @loopback0 said:

    I have a device in the list that's not been online for two years.

    Probably been so long that the official way of getting it off the list has changed (Google's APIs tend to last about as long as a snowball in Phoenix) and there was no remove-me trigger set the last time it connected. Connect once would be enough to cause it to be removed a month later.

    They probably don't have a purge job set up. Because that would be expensive to run and they don't care very much.



  • @Tsaukpaetra said:

    I'm pretty sure the Edit button is specifically to show you (through googleAdServicies) a text box to edit the NickName of the device. If you happen to be blocking ads, it doesn't work? Then again, Advertisements to change your device ID

    Addendum to 2: Well, technically it's not loading the edit code from advertisements, but if the payments ad fails to load it causes an JS exception, which breaks the rest of the page. For some reason.

    It still does nothing in IE and Android Chrome without any extensions.



  • So I did a factory reset on my old phone and gave it to my mother.

    After configuring her account and updating everything I tried to use the device manager (the page where you can locate and remotely lock/delete your device). But it just said "no active devices". I had to google the problem and reset some stuff to fix it. It's a bug from 2013.

    :wtf: Google?



  • Oooh, another one. On this account:

    Google Play website -> My account -> My Play activity (on the left) = error.

    Probably due to not having a Google+ or something.

    (Hey Google, you can hire me as a product tester, I'll do it really cheap)



  • Oh and your latest "photos" app is missing one small detail

    Excuse the cuadruple-post.



  • No repro.

    LG G3, Android 5.0, fully up to date.



  • It's something about old phones, and maybe the LG camera app. Only happens when you tap the last photo taken in the camera. You can still delete if you launch the Photos app by itself.

    Still, the older version (the one that came with Google+) could delete photos. I can't imagine why the newer one can't.


  • Notification Spam Recipient

    Pictures taken from the lock screen aren't deletable (though they typically aren't viewable either) without unlocking the phone. WTF is going on here?


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