Ways that are easy? No. **

You need to use purpose-built apps for backing up and restoring application data.

There are individual apps that you might find handy, for instance "Bookmarks Sort & Backup", that save bookmark data on the SD card, and then can restore them from there when you load up a new ROM. In the absence of using those apps, you will lose stuff like SMS messages and any e-mail which is stored locally on the phone, unless you make provisions to back them up - in addition to all your application settings.

You are right, it is an annoyance - bookmarks in particular are my pet peeve, followed by setting up all the home screens in Sense.

Be aware that there are limited cases where a new version of a ROM would get released, and the developer might say something like:

"...for this 2.3b release, you may no-wipe upgrade install if you are using the 2.3 release, but everybody else should do a pre-wipe install..."

This might be the case if the developer releases a kernel patch, or adds/modifies a device driver. In cases like that, none of the applications really change, so it is safe to do a no-wipe install. For switching between random ROMs, it's not a great idea to avoid the wipe.

eu1





** There is a more difficult way, but I'm not sure it is worth the effort: write a Unix shell script (stored on your SD card) which does a partial wipe of /data, deleting everything except the folders for the specific applications you are interested in, located in /data/data/<application-name(s)>. This is not guaranteed to be robust, however, because some apps call other apps, and you might be preserving only some of the desired "state" by using a hack like this. (Note this script would need to be run under the Amon_RA recovery boot, not the main OS)

 

Titanium Backup will save all your apps to the sd card and restore them. After you install a new rom, download Titanium and then sit there and hit "install" and "done" and they're set up. It's great.

Also, Dolphin HD lets you sync bookmarks to SD, and regular Dolphin lets you sync with Google bookmarks. xScope (what I use) syncs to the SD.

 

Ways that are easy? YES. Titanium Backup. Restores EVERYTHING. Simple as it gets. I use it every time I flash a rom. Its just about the only way to ensure your apps still get updates in the market.