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Help My first ever post on android....restoration of data related

I am sure this has been asked before, but being new to android forums, i could not find an easy way to narrow down my search results (too many hits). So, here we go again....

Mobile phone : Galaxy S4 (T-mobile SGH-M919) running Android 4.4.4, 2GB RAM out of which 400MB is reported as free (as of NOW), 16 GB memory out of which 805 MB is reported as free.

My problem started couple of months ago on my 4 yr old galaxy S4. It started random reboots with a message that will be something similar to "SIM card can not be detected. RESTART" and this was starting to occur almost everyday. So, one week ago, i went into "Settings ->Application Manager" and hit the "STOP" on few apps that i randomly chose. In 4 years, this is the first time i have attempted to change something in my phone, since i am not familiar with Android.... To my surprise, the phone has not rebooted in 1 week now. I have attached an image below of the "TURNED OFF" applications, one of which is the culprit i suspect.

But, then i started getting into problem of not being able to HOLD the home button, in order to see the list of running apps. I would get an error saying that "the process com.android.systemui has stopped" and the phone would reset the UI back to home screen. Searching the net showed a thread which said "Uninstall all the updates to the application called "google app". But, i am having to do that everytime i reboot mobile. In addition, i have started noting some other weird behaviour in the mobile.

So, my intention is to do a factor reset of this phone, (after i backup data) and restore my data. I only need data i have stored in "Contacts, whatsapp, S-memo, text messages" and such apps. On internet, I have found info on doing all this, on a per application basis. Is there any way to restore my phone to brand new condition (factory reset) but keep all the settings and data i have currently stored on this phone ? Any suggestion is appreciated. I don't want to deal with silly errors anymore and i am not familiar with Android - so can not take up on things like Rooting etc.

Thanks.
 

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Is there any way to restore my phone to brand new condition (factory reset) but keep all the settings and data i have currently stored on this phone?
Welcome to the site! :)

It would be nice, but unfortunately a factory reset wipes all data. The only way to keep your data is to back it up first.
 
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Backing up app data is one thing. I'd personally recommend separate backups of important stuff in addition to a general backup like Helium.

But I'd not try to back up settings etc. Reason: if you were to do a reset and restore /everything/ to how it is now then you would restore the problem too. If it didn't then you didn't need to do the reset in the first place.

Remember that all a factory reset does is erase apps and data (including settings). It doesn't touch the ROM, won't undo any system updates. It's just a quick way of clearing all potentially problematic apps and data in one go.
 
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Thanks guys. It is nice to see that my decision to pick this forum over the other android forums (i searched net to pick this one), is not in vein. I had the same thought as Hadron above, and hence found that my phone works ok, if i simply "TURN OFF" all the apps that i do not use (since i am a basic user who wants only simple things like SMS, whatsapp, photos, phone calls, etc). Thus, my phone is behaving better now.

  1. Part of the problem might have been that I was almost maxed out on my 16GB of storage on this galaxy S4, having lots of pics/videos (it was at 15.2GB or more, before i cleaned up). I read somewhere on the net that android (i have 4.4.4) needs atleast 1GB free space, to perform efficiently, though official numbers for android are much lower in space requirement. I have a strong suspicion that my experience on S4 confirms this rumor.
  2. I also installed Nova launcher, since i don't use the fancy features (Air gesture, multiwindow, swipes etc, etc) of default TouchWiz (which i stuck to for 4 yrs, not knowing any better).
 
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