Re: [PLUG] Android-further

[Rich Freeman <r-plug@thefreemanclan.net>]

On Wed, Jul 11, 2012 at 10:31 AM, jeff <jeffv@op.net> wrote:
> I rsync'd the old phone to a backup directory and rsync'd the backup
> directory to the new phone.  POOF - it's loaded, oggs and all.
>
> Yes, I know; if I allowed THE CLOUD to back up my phone, it would be
> automatic.

Actually, Android does NOT back up your music to the cloud from the
phone.  If the music was on your phone because it was already on
Google Music (which, _ugh_, doesn't support Ogg) then when you connect
a new phone to Google Music then it will sync.

It is generally best to not view the cloud with Android as a "backup"
so much as "where you operate."  If you have your phone synced to a
Google account then if you add contacts to the phone they get synced
out, and if you add them elsewhere they get synced in.  So, the phone
is really just an in-sync copy of some other repository - neither is a
"backup" per-se.

Also - while it is all automagic if you sign in on the welcome screens
with a Google account, you don't need one to use the phone (except for
the Market - as with iPods/etc you need an ID to use the Market,
though you could use other app stores without using Google's).  If you
do later add a Google account to your phone it will not start syncing
your existing contacts with Google - when you add new contacts you'll
be asked whether they are to be added to Google or just to the phone.
You could move contacts to the Google account, and then of course they
will sync.

The model of Android is that your contacts list (and many other lists)
are supposed to be a view of many different data sources, so you can
have Google contacts, phone contacts, Facebook contacts, and so on.
The intent is to merge these seamlessly, though it isn't quite
seamless in practice.  What I don't like is that apps aren't jailed to
operate within only some of these domains, so your facebook app can
change your google contacts.  However, the general design is that you
can keep stuff where you want it, and operate cloudlessly if you
desire.

Honestly the Android Cloud Backup isn't really perfect.  Quite a few
settings get synced, but there are also many that aren't, including
your home screen setup (that is probably complicated by the fact that
everybody and their uncle swaps out the home screen app).  It is nice
though to sign into the phone and see it automatically connect to WPA2
Wi-Fi and start downloading apps (uh, I assume they're guarding my
WPA2 key).

Rich
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