Titanium Backup has long been the name associated with backing up apps and data on rooted phones, and now there may just be a feature added that solves one of HTC’s horrible rooting hurdles – a tweet from the developers claims they’re adding the ability to back up a phone completely before unlocking, and then restore after the HTCDev bootloader unlocker has erased the phone. And if you’re feeling adventurous, you can download and test it for yourself.
If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen my failed experiment using adb backup last week on my HTC EVO 3D. Basically, this was using the command adb backup -all followed by using HTCdev to unlock my bootloader, losing all the data on the phone, and then attempting to restore using adb restore backup.ab. I spent several hours attempting to restore, only to find out over and over again that something in HTC Sense 3.6 simply doesn’t work. Then I admitted defeat and gave up.
Today, Titanium Backup released a test version which should allow users to restore data that was backed up using the adb backup function available on ICS+ (at least) stock ROMs.
This should mean that, very shortly, we’ll have a step by step posted here for taking your unrooted phone and rooting it via HTCdev without risking loss of any data. However, probably more importantly, this should allow unrooted users to have a backup handy that could be restored in the event of an emergency.
HTC currently wipes the data during an unlocking, theoretically to make the data on your phone safe in the event it’s stolen and you have a passcode and USB debugging turned off. However for those wanting to unlock just to install Superuser, it’s a hassle and a half.
You can grab the Titanium Backup test from the link in this tweet. However, keep in mind you’ll need to make the unrooted backup using adb from a computer. It will also probably be updated in Google Play soon enough.
Wow this would have been awesome before I rooted. Hopefully this will be perfected before my next phone.
Forgive the ignorance as I never rooted my phone – but what advantage does this give you over using “adb restore”?
For first time unlockers you still have to install the SDK, get the phone drivers and run adb backup right? I don’t see how this makes it any easier, can you not just run “adb restore” after using htcdev?
Long day, forgive the short post:
adb restore does not work on any Sense ICS I’ve run across. It also did not work with previous versions of the OS as far as I can tell.
It’s something that’s part of ICS but does not work with Sense.
Therefor the advantage is you’re actually able to restore something whereas without this you’re not.
First time unlockers have to get the adb toolkit, install the universal naked driver. But that does not make “adb restore” work.
Short and sweet, understand completely now. I use Launcher Pro with the stock ICS Evo 3D – what I wasn’t processing was that it still makes it a Sense ROM even if I default to a different launcher. Thanks…
Umm, how do you have Launcher Pro working on Evo 3D ICS?… anytime I add a launcher Pro widget it causes endless FC’s. I’d log to use it but it’s totally broke for me =/
After FoxFi, this is the only other reason I root. Hmmmmmm. very interesting.
This is pretty sweet. Such a great app
Can’t wait for the wirte-up. Keep up the good work.
unfortunately for me this came out a bit too late! anyway, so what titanium backup can now do is restore a rooted phone to its completely original state. so can htc tell if the phone is rooted or not if we restore it? (assuming they don’t check our policy agreement when we unlocked the bootloader at htc dev)
Titanium can restore to the state you were in before you rooted and HTCDev wiped everything… so if you had a thirty or so apps set up and unlocked, well, you no longer did any more… but now you should be able to restore.
Problem has been Titanium can’t touch another program’s data or apk without root access, so there’s been no way to back anything up or restore it without root until now…
Titanium still can’t, but adb backup can (back up at least)
i get it now! thanks. this was a very informative post.
which this was about 3 months again lol. Very nice though.
So are there any benefits for rooted users? Obviously titanium has always been a must for the root/flash user. But does this new version have any new tricks for us?
Thanks for the info Paul!
Very nice work by the Devs!
A great option by Titanium if they are able to accomplish this. HTC unlocking/unrooting methods are just too plain messy when compared to Samsung.
There’s no need to wipe the device when rooted and I’ve never been a fan of the HTC unlock method. What I do with my phone is none of thier business.
This would have had come in very handy about 10 months ago when I had to reinstall everything, haha.
Yet, it is nice to see the developers working towards making it easier for the root community to backup and restore their devices.
yes definitely. titanium backup is doing one hell of a job.
I can’t live without Titanium Backup anymore ;-P But it’s nice to read it now works without root.
it doesn’t work without root, it works on the only method of backups you can do without root…
That’s pretty awesome! I’ve always wondered about the world of rooting, but I’ve also always been worried about bricking my phone, losing data, etc. Looks like it’ll be time to try it out pretty soon.
Well no-rooted users can maybe get a taste of what us rooted users enjoy on a day to day bases
Awesome program! Just bought it! But how can I create a widget that restores an app, or apps? Cannot find any restore actions in the widget screen!