Comment by herpderperator

4 days ago

Have they fixed the ability to easily transfer your existing Android data to the new Android phone? I find that every time I upgrade, despite choosing the options to transfer apps/settings, that 90% of the apps I open just greet me with the login screen and I have to set everything up completely from scratch. I remember maybe a handful of apps, I think one was Uber, that were able to transfer everything including the login session. That was truly magic. That's how it should be for all apps. I understand banks might have special security requirements and I already know for Google Wallet, your cards need to be reactivated even if they transfer over, but most apps are not banks.

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herpderperator

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gruez  4 days ago

Blame the app developers, not google. They specifically added a backup/restore mode for device to device transfer, that bypasses backup blacklists[1]. However apps can still opt out by registering a backup agent, and returning no data.

[1] https://developer.android.com/identity/data/testingbackup

  • summm  4 days ago

    Google actively avoided providing a local, secure, and seamless backup or even an interface for 3rd party backup services to make users more dependent on Google cloud services. Of course many app developers decided the Google cloud is too insecure, being not end-to-end encrypted. And Google enables them by not giving the users ways to override those stupid decisions. This wouldn't have happened on PCs, where you can mostly just copy over the application's user directory.

    • gruez  4 days ago

      >Of course many app developers decided the Google cloud is too insecure, being not end-to-end encrypted

      But so far as I can tell D2D transfers don't hit the cloud?

      >For a D2D transfer, the Backup Manager Service queries your app for backup data and passes it directly to the Backup Manager Service on the new device, which loads it in to your app.

      https://developer.android.com/identity/data/testingbackup

      If your app is opting out of backup by implementing a custom backup agent that returns no data, it's pretty clear you're against user backups, period.