the wipe

So my battery is so bad I need to do a backup and restore of my device.  Here we go!  The below is a play by play as I performed the wipe/backup.

-I plugged in device and decided to update before I backup/restore.
-I went to my device, and pressed update.   Itunes told me that there were purchased items on my iPhone that had not been transferred to my iTunes library, and that I should do that before i update.   It did not give me a button on how to do that, AND I have not purchased anything through the app store???  
-After some time, i found if I "right click" on my device I found the "transfer purchases" - done

-Still says there are purchases, but doesn't say what they are or give me a button to transfer them.  All i want to do is update my phone.  Google here we come.
-I found it.  Google said I had to authorize my computer, why didn't itunes say that?
-Never mind.  This is still an issue.   It appears to be doing something, but the header does not say it is syncing.
-Waited 5 minutes and tried again.  Success!
-7 minutes to update.  Not bad!

-"right click" backup phone - Easy!
- On the phone, general settings, wipe device - Easy
-Phone doesn't work unless I plug it back into iTunes.  Wierd!
-restore done!  only took a few minutes
-more restoring (apps) is taking a little bit longer.
-Done! After the initial hickup this was pretty easy.

The backup restore process was pretty flawless.  The phone is EXACTLY as i left it and any moderate computer user can figure it out.  HOWEVER if you never plug in your phone, you dont have any backups.  If you lose your phone, you SOL.

  Over on the android side of things, backups are a little big tougher.   Google does not provide any computer software to end users because everything is cloud based.    If you get a new phone, Google will do a basic backup and restore of apps that are installed, but that is it.  
  Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and a number of other things are stored in the cloud, so they dont need backups. It is up to the user to backup SMS, photos, app data, videos and a bunch of other stuff.
  An app called MyBackupPro does all this, but it costs $5.   It also one-ups the iPhone backup in one very very very special way.... users use it.

It will backup to the cloud when you send tell it to via the developers website.   Say for example you dropped your phone in a toilet, but it magically stayed on?   Back it up and restore to a different phone without touching it.

I should also note that no backup app can backup application data or settings without root access.  This plain sucks.  If you work for 10 hours beating angry birds, you can't backup the data!  Apple has done this flawlessly and they deserve a gold star!


So what would I recommend to the average user?  That is tough.  This article implies that users are not plugging their phones into their computer.  If they do, they are not running the backup because they are not updating their OS, i think (iphoners correct me if i'm wrong).

What good is an awesome backup if it is never done?

MyBackup Pro can be scheduled to backup every night, and back-up to the cloud.... every night.