Backup Program.. Faceoff

[ToNrDrOiD]

MyBackUpPRO or Sprite Backup

what are people using ???

they are pretty close ...

i know mybackupPro has scheduled backups and sprite does not ...

which do u feel is better then the other?

 

[Julian_Sprite]

Hi ToNrDrOiD,

I am one of the Sprite Team, so I will always have a biased view

I can say though we backup and actually restore

Our previous builds
SMS
MMS
Contacts (all)
Call logs
Music (playlists, tracks, albums, artists, genre)
Pictures
Video
Alarms
Home screen shortcuts
Wallpaper
Calendar (new)
Browser favorites
User Dictionary (This one isn't 100%, so we are fixing issues)
Searches
Hero themes (new)
Hero extra contact fields (new)
System settings (we also notify the subsystems, so they actually work.. we don't have them all, but we are pretty close... we actually back them all up, however restoring requires the backup application to do special things after restore, not just a reset of phone)
Some application settings (only a few so far, but we are working on a new mechanism)
Backup spans (Android has a 2Gig file lseek/length limit)


We have compression, encryption and are localized in many languages already...


The current posted release has
Contacts sync support... we play nicely with Google or exchange sync...
Plurks
System Settings for Calendar notifications
Instant Messaging
APN settings
Footprints
HTC Stock Widget
HTC Worldclock
HTC music widget, album art
HTC Twitter


And there are lots more being added in the coming builds. There should be another out in next week, (including a sneak announcement, Calendar .. with google/exchange sync support)

Hope that gives you a little more info,

Julian
PS: sometimes unfortunately you have to try systems, there can be some pretty biased reviews (or marketing really). Also important is support, in the case there is something unexpected.

 

[ToNrDrOiD]

One of the biggest things I was looking for was scheduled backups. Why doesn't sprite have that ? ANd will it in the near future?

 

[Julian_Sprite]

Oh, I probably should bring up to two features we don't have

Scheduled Backup
Working on it, but we would like to do it well with Incremental...
For now, as most people will know Android Backup is new for us, so we are covering content range development first, to make sure we get as much as possible of your device back.


Online backup
Also a feature we have had requested over last couple of years. We have developed the technology platform, a test was here... www.virtualmobile.com,
The worrying thing about online backup is, you have to do it properly... as you now have one failure point, and any outage or problem can affect our millions of customers.

for example.
1. you need https for logins, and any trusted content page... no real service can be without...
2. you need https or better for data transfer to and from device, and prompt user with certs etc...
3. incremental transfers...
4. SLA,
a. how much uptime on service (if my phone dies, when can i get my data back)...
b. scalability, load testing, usage stats
c. disaster recovering for service (what is the plan)
d. server patching? - what are my TOS?
5. intrusion detection, (do you have an active external audit for intrusion detection, if so how often - daily?)
6. cross contaimnation of data... has been seen by many smaller systems, have you tested across accounts, across sessions. please don't let anyone else see my data
7. backup of service, very topical right now, with Microsofts problem
8. mirroring of service
9. what is the limit of a backup size, is a backup verified...


And thats just a few of my thoughts, some of the tech web developer guys at Sprite would prattle off the hundreds of other cases needed to operate a good/safe online (non off the shelf) service. A good service costs millions to setup (or lost of blood and sweat by an opensource community), and a lot to maintain. I should know, Virtual Mobile platform technology cost us years of research, time and a cool mill or so

Julian

 

[ToNrDrOiD]

i would love to see a head to head chart comparison between:
MyBackUpPRO & Sprite Backup

I dont use google sync ... when u do it messes up the callerid pic that u have set for the person.. it is converted into a smaller resolution picture and it is no longer sharp ... so that is why i am looking for a good local backup program ...

MyBackUp Pro .. says to do and have more then sprite ... online sync and schedule backups and compatible with Hero .. newest device... it looks like sprite is following MyBackUP pro and trying to keep up...??? that is what it looks like from outside the box ...?????

RerWare MyBackup Pro: The #1 Backup Utility for Android&#8482 Phones (backup Android&#8482,backup G1,backup Hero,backup MyTouch)

...v2.0.4

- Up to 5 times faster backup speeds.
- Fastest Backup on Android. Backup 1000 SMS messages in under 10 seconds.

v2.0.3

- Full support for Donut (SDK 1.6)
- Full support for Hero contacts (if restoring from older roms, contacts will show up as Google contacts)

v2.0.1

- Full support for Hero and MyTouch
- Hero Note: when restoring home short cuts from previous phones, the shortcuts will be available in the classic home view, not in the TouchFlo home. You can backup TouchFlo home on Hero and restore them as well, but only going forward..
- Dim screen when backing up or restoring ..
​

 

[rogcontact]

Hi Everyone,

I am the product manager of MyBackup Pro here are RerWare, LLC.

Here are the facts relating to MyBackup Pro:

- It is the #1 backup application for Android, the 2nd best selling application for last month, and the 3rd most popular paid application on the Android Market.

- It backs up more data then any other backup software on the Market.

- It is capable of backing up to Online or SD Card.

- Online backup is a good idea in case you lose the phone or get it stolen. If it is only on SD Card, you would lose the info, online would not.

- You can Schedule daily or weekly backups to run automatically.

- Device and Online Data Viewer allows you to see your data without the need to restore it.

- We have the ability for 3rd party applications to integrate with us and backup 3rd party specific data.

- We are the Market leaders, and setting the Market standards for a Backup and Restore solution.


Backing up Pictures, Music, and Videos to the SD Card is a nonsense thing to do. These are already stored on the SD Card, so "backing them up" to the SD Card makes no sense. It is almost an insult to anyone who understands these phones.


Numbers speak for themselves, here are the review statistics for MyBackup Pro:
http://www.androlib.com/android.stat...ppro-jmnC.aspx

Here is the other guys:
http://www.androlib.com/android.stat...ckup-qqBE.aspx


The people have spoken (shouted), MyBackup Pro is the way to go.

 

[Julian_Sprite]

Hi ToNrDrOiD,

We could claim we backup everything on Hero, but then we would be just marketing...

We claim the individual information we actually restore, as you hopefully can see from our list above, or if you check our permissions we need a whole lot more than other systems, especially in the 'write permissions' category.

We also try to put a product out that is tested,..

But I think you will find we cover now approximately double other systems data (even without multimedia categories).

We have also solved issues (as part of that testing) of restoring contacts so they don't show as Google, and issues with screwing up HTC scenes that others have had hits on.

I don't think you can call it catchup, perhaps our first release was on a par, but then we did music providers even then (playlists for some on this forum are important), and we were new, it was a beta after all. Even then our backups were and still are faster than others, (some user posts claiming we did equivalent backups in minutes, and others an hour)

As pointed out, we could simply put out all sorts of 'features', but they have to be safe, and that costs money, not 10,000 sales at $5 (we would like to claim then they are secure). I guess for us, it's about getting the best reliable bang for your buck to the users that are paying for support.

We feel we have to get be very careful to get the basics of a backup (the content), and the harder parts (migration, ROM, handsets, manufacturers) covered first. So we are fanatical about support, and work hard to cover hopefully 2-3 times the content of other systems in our restores.

As far as usage stats, time eventually shows up marketing comments, or find out people who post as users... we were a little annoyed when Roger bought, cancelled and posted numerous times on our marketplace as Sally, and Dan and other pseudo names on our product marketplace, and we even went as far as getting our friendly users to post responses... to hide these. (It wasn't something, frankly we were used to...), and we stopped this quickly, and allowed theri posts to continue.

We have been the Market leaders in Windows Mobile for 8 years, 17 million licenses, and built Ghost (Aquired by Symantec, and rebadged as their Symantec Ghost) prior. We know backup, although the market has changed over the years.

It's an exciting time, with many many devices, manufacturers, and various OS releases in quick succession. For us currently our focus is to cover the content on these devices, working with OEMs who bundle our products HP, HTC, LG, Sharp, Palm etc to hopefully safe guard your ability to restore. Long gone are the days of supporting one G1 device, partially... and using the tech community to test,


Yes a comparison would be good, as long as it's granular and not just marketing

It is great Rogcontact, aka Orcking has owned up as the developer of Mybackup, a pity we had to expose him first on other posts, last week.
Pure marketing claims, posing as user posts, all over the web, isn't exactly integrity.

We will continue to be content leaders, extending abilities also like Migration
Sprite Mobile - Transfer Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Symbian data to Android
So again, you can get your content back from another OS

The Google marketplace still seems to be young, and as pointed out by other developers like larva labs not a 'business' sustaining revenue source. So we will continue to fund Android development, and support from other revenue streams... this does however put us in the unique position we don't need to constantly try to boost our ratings by any means possible for income, and we can concentrate on development for what we see as a great immerging iPhone platform contender, with Android.

Good call on the comparison chart,

Julian

 

[rogcontact]

I can assure you guys that a lot of what Julian is saying is simply untrue and incorrect.

There is no need for us to be childishly arguing over this issue. We are the Market leaders hands down.

We have an amazing Support and Quality Assurance Team. Customers who contacted us for support or questions have been more then satisfied.

If anyone needs any support or has any questions, we can be reached anytime at: Support@RerWare.com

 

[DaZ_M]

I can assure you guys that a lot of what Julian is saying is simply untrue and incorrect.

And we are just supposed to believe you because... you are the 'market leaders'...lol

EDIT: untrue AND incorrect? lol...

 

[ToNrDrOiD]

backup program questions:

sprite:
select data
where would u select all the 3rd party apps... does sprite back up 3rd party apps or just system data that is listed there...??

is application settings --> 3rd party apps?

MyBackUp PRO:
backup ... two options ... applications and data ...

is there a way to back up everything in one shot ... all phone data including 3rd party apps? or u have to do one for data and another for 3rd party apps?

scheduled backups... u can only do this for DATA and not 3rd party apps?

 

[chris76]

Sprite - I will try it. Specs look great.

 

[Julian_Sprite]

Hi Guys,

We have updated the manual from 1.0 to 1.3,

You can find it here
Sprite Mobile - Getting Started

No we don't backup apps, been on the list for a while, but then we don't break the link between marketplace when they are restored either...

Application settings is indeed thirdparty, and OEM HTC etc specific applications data. We are adding quite a few currently,

The getting started manual has a recent list of what content we cover. Note we are a little more specifc about settings, we back them all up, listed are the ones we have written extra code to make work properly.

In relation to music, the category covers ringtone, voice recordings albumn art, playlist, as well as tracks so yes some people actually want that..

Should have a new build out soon, with yet further content types, and enhancements thanks to supporting customers working with us.

Hi Chris, grab a copy from our site, as with all our products for last 8 years there is a 30 day money back, if our backup range isn't enough to entice you,

Julian

 

[Julian_Sprite]

Hi Guys,

Just a quick update,

We released Sprite Migrate. It does App backup, file browsing and process killing. It's a free app,

Advanced Scheduling is probably out today...

Many thanks

Julian

 

[homemadehitshow]

Interesting thread I had not seen before. Also interesting is my reaction. rogcontact's approach just completely turned me off his product. Sprite guy does an organized explanation of his product, Rog goes off into attack mode sales speak. I am soon to buy and Sprite will now get a good look that it would not have before and if things are close to even it will win out based on developer attitude.

 

[jimdroid]

Hi Guys,

Just a quick update,

We released Sprite Migrate. It does App backup, file browsing and process killing. It's a free app,

Advanced Scheduling is probably out today...

Many thanks

Julian

Did you mean Mechanic?

jd

 

[rdalcanto]

Does Mybackup also restore pictures, music, etc.? One of the reviews in the app store said it does not. Thanks.

 

[satinkzo]

Interesting thread I had not seen before. Also interesting is my reaction. rogcontact's approach just completely turned me off his product. Sprite guy does an organized explanation of his product, Rog goes off into attack mode sales speak. I am soon to buy and Sprite will now get a good look that it would not have before and if things are close to even it will win out based on developer attitude.

I completely agree. I got your post and said "Wow, I'm not the only one reading it this way" I just bought Sprite backup for the simple fact that I didn't like rogcontact's posts and that didn't give me a good feeling about the company.

 

[Ziani]

No we don't backup apps, been on the list for a while, but then we don't break the link between marketplace when they are restored either...Julian

Does this mean that all my free and paid apps will still show in the market for downloading after a reset?

 

[gadget]

Hi ToNrDrOiD,

I am one of the Sprite Team, so I will always have a biased view

I can say though we backup and actually restore

Our previous builds
SMS
MMS
Contacts (all)
Call logs
Music (playlists, tracks, albums, artists, genre)
Pictures
Video
Alarms
Home screen shortcuts
Wallpaper
Calendar (new)
Browser favorites
User Dictionary (This one isn't 100%, so we are fixing issues)
Searches
Hero themes (new)
Hero extra contact fields (new)
System settings (we also notify the subsystems, so they actually work.. we don't have them all, but we are pretty close... we actually back them all up, however restoring requires the backup application to do special things after restore, not just a reset of phone)
Some application settings (only a few so far, but we are working on a new mechanism)
Backup spans (Android has a 2Gig file lseek/length limit)


We have compression, encryption and are localized in many languages already...


The current posted release has
Contacts sync support... we play nicely with Google or exchange sync...
Plurks
System Settings for Calendar notifications
Instant Messaging
APN settings
Footprints
HTC Stock Widget
HTC Worldclock
HTC music widget, album art
HTC Twitter


And there are lots more being added in the coming builds. There should be another out in next week, (including a sneak announcement, Calendar .. with google/exchange sync support)

Hope that gives you a little more info,

Julian
PS: sometimes unfortunately you have to try systems, there can be some pretty biased reviews (or marketing really). Also important is support, in the case there is something unexpected.

hello; I do have/had sprite. I just had to update my Samsung Moment at the Sprint store...They erased a lot of my data.. I do have it on my card backed up by sprite ( i hope ) the update sprint gave me erased all my apps.
Please tell me what i can do to get sprite back onto my Samsung Moment. If you can....tell me step by step. I am not all that computer literate...especially with some of the android quirks. thank you

 

[gadget]

Oh, I probably should bring up to two features we don't have

Scheduled Backup
Working on it, but we would like to do it well with Incremental...
For now, as most people will know Android Backup is new for us, so we are covering content range development first, to make sure we get as much as possible of your device back.


Online backup
Also a feature we have had requested over last couple of years. We have developed the technology platform, a test was here... www.virtualmobile.com,
The worrying thing about online backup is, you have to do it properly... as you now have one failure point, and any outage or problem can affect our millions of customers.

for example.
1. you need https for logins, and any trusted content page... no real service can be without...
2. you need https or better for data transfer to and from device, and prompt user with certs etc...
3. incremental transfers...
4. SLA,
a. how much uptime on service (if my phone dies, when can i get my data back)...
b. scalability, load testing, usage stats
c. disaster recovering for service (what is the plan)
d. server patching? - what are my TOS?
5. intrusion detection, (do you have an active external audit for intrusion detection, if so how often - daily?)
6. cross contaimnation of data... has been seen by many smaller systems, have you tested across accounts, across sessions. please don't let anyone else see my data
7. backup of service, very topical right now, with Microsofts problem
8. mirroring of service
9. what is the limit of a backup size, is a backup verified...


And thats just a few of my thoughts, some of the tech web developer guys at Sprite would prattle off the hundreds of other cases needed to operate a good/safe online (non off the shelf) service. A good service costs millions to setup (or lost of blood and sweat by an opensource community), and a lot to maintain. I should know, Virtual Mobile platform technology cost us years of research, time and a cool mill or so

Julian

hello; I do have/had sprite. I just had to update my Samsung Moment at the Sprint store...They erased a lot of my data.. I do have it on my card backed up by sprite ( i hope ) the update sprint gave me erased all my apps.
Please tell me what i can do to get sprite back onto my Samsung Moment. If you can....tell me step by step. I am not all that computer literate...especially with some of the android quirks. thank you
P.S. I also want to express my concern of how long it takes to backup...I am used to BackupBuddy for the Palm Treo and it was fast and backed up all my apps and data and settings...One fantastic program...but only for the palm...Please help...thanks again

 

[rchusid]

When contacts are backed up by either of these programs (or any other means) does it also back up the pictures associated with each contact?

I had a problem yesterday when testing a 3rd party program to sync my Palm with gmail so I could ultimately sync the Palm with the Droid. A number of contacts either got deleted or lost their associated picture on gmail. I was able to restore all the lost contacts but the pictures were not restored and took time to add back on. Before testing this further I would like a way to backup the contact list on the Droid and/or gmail which also restores the associated pictures.

 

[Julian_Sprite]

Hi Guys,

We are happy to post we have Android Backup 2.0 in beta,

It includes a new UI, (cleaner user experience, with more feedback)
More language support (many many more, and about 20 more on the way still)
Online backup (to secure box.net, other online providers being added)

Please contact our helpdesk staff, if you have any questions on 2.0, or any at all questions on Android 1.4
helpdesk@spritesoftware....
We are happy to walk people through Android recovery,

the manual for 2.0 can be found here
http://www.spritesoftware.com/Support/FAQ/Android-Backup/Android-Backup-2-0-User-Guide

1.4 users should have Backup 2.0 shortly, we are just working on a few kinks, and of course a few more features

Julian

 

[rogcontact]

Hey guys,

Just to let you know, MyBackup Pro now supports root users and gives them the ability to backup all applications data\settings, protected applications, Android Market links, and even System applications data.

We think you are going to love it.

 

[Gekko]

i thought that Android Phones come with a free Backup App? no? i thought i saw one on an HTC phone demo? was that just an HTC/Sense feature App? any good? what doesn't it do?

 

[Julian_Sprite]

Hi Gekko,

We agree, after bundling on 17 million Windows Mobile devices, in ROM, we are happy that already a few Android OEM's have us on the way on numerous devices,

The good news is we will be providing a much deeper backup experience,

Under NDA's we can't announce unless we get clearence the details,

There are exciting framework changes also happening on the Android platform for Backup,


Julian