Maybe tell us what you did to make a backup? There is not a single universal backup solution for Android, so did you use some Samsung tool, rely on Google to back up app data, use adb, make your own backups of internal storage and particular apps...?

As for why there isn't a simple, one-click backup for Android, ask Google. But you won't be the first, and given that Android has been publicly available for 13 years now and this hasn't been done I'd not hold your breath as it clearly isn't a priority for them.

 

From what you've said I'm not even certain it restored anything: Contacts and Calendar entries are most likely synced separately with your Google account, so unless you had turned sync off they would restore when you logged into the account whether you had made this backup or not.

That sounds like Google's backup, though as Samsung tend to provide their own (and modify the Settings completely) I can't be certain. I did come across an article on the Google backup earlier today, when looking at someone else's problem - don't know whether there will be anything in there that is any help. I know some people have had success with that, but I've never used or trusted it myself and always made sure I have my own backups of anything important.

Apple have always been different: the iPhone started life almost as a computer peripheral like the iPod (though they never called it that), where you would back up, restore or sync media with a computer using iTunes (and, in the early days, use iTunes to install OS updates). That may have moved to iCloud for most people, but the functionality has remained. Google started out wireless-only, didn't originally offer any backups, and have never really got that serious with them. PC backups depend on what tool you use to do the backup (I've done disk image backups before swapping PC hard drives on occasion, but I'm not really a Windows user - if it doesn't have a bash shell its of limited use to me ). Ironically there are tools to do similar things with Android, but you need to modify the software first (unlock the bootloader and install a custom recovery).

 

For a Galaxy S7, there is Samsung Smart Switch, that's a complete backup, restore, and transfer tool that Samsung makes for their devices. Some other manufacturers do similar backup and restore tools as well for their phones, like Huawei's HiSuite, etc. Of course these come from the device manufacturers and NOT Google.

 

smart switch can switch data phone to phone. but it also can make and restore data to your pc. it does not store data in the cloud.

 

agreed