Live Backup – Indie app of the day

What is Live Backup?

Any experienced root user will tell you that you should have a Nandroid backup no matter what. Even if you don’t intend on doing any of the fun stuff like flashing ROMs, mods, or installing Xposed modules, you should still have a Nandroid prepared just in case. It can help fix any number of problems and backing things up is just a good idea. Live Backup helps with that.

Here’s how it works. Live Backup is an app that allows you to create Nandroid backups without rebooting into recovery. It is not the only app that lets you do this but it is one of the easiest to use. Essentially all you do is open the app, select your type of recovery, select which partitions need backed up, and hit go. From that point, the app will create a Nandroid backup which you can then use in your recovery to restore if need be.

That’s really it. It’s a simple app that performs a simple task. The main claims to fame are supporting both of the big recoveries (TWRP and ClockworkMod Recovery) and allowing you to create backups without rebooting into a recovery first. Given that Nandroid backups can take quite a long time to create, this can help prevent you from missing a potentially important phone call or text message.

So what’s wrong with Live Backup?

In terms of functionality, there isn’t much wrong with it. The backups that Live Backup creates do actually work and aside from an excruciatingly long finalizing period at the end of creating the backup, it’s all pretty straightforward. There could be a case made that charging $2.00 for an app that performs only one task that you can perform for free in your custom recovery may be overdoing it a bit. That’s up to individual interpretation.

Also, Live Backup specifies that you need Stericson’s BusyBox to be installed for it to work but doesn’t really specify why it has to be that particular version of BusyBox. Lastly, the interface is a little boring, but it’s not like you’re going to spend that much time using it.

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Final thoughts

All in all, this is a pretty good app for root users. The experienced root users probably don’t mind booting into the recovery to create their own Nandroid backups and there will be people who can’t justify paying $2.00 for such a simple app. However, there are hoards of lazy people and beginners who could probably get a lot out of an application that does all the hard work for you and doesn’t force you to boot into recovery. Especially people who are new to rooting and don’t yet understand the importance of having a Nandroid backup waiting and ready for them. If this looks like your cup of tea, the button below will take you to the app in the Play Store.

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WhatsApp: how to backup and restore your conversations

Sterling Keys 2014-03-22T10:00:01Z1 hour ago

Sterling Keys

After finishing his Bachelor of Commerce degree at the University of Alberta, Sterling made the move to Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Within a stone's throw of mountains, ocean, and complete wilderness, he mountain bikes and skis during the day and is hopelessly connected to his phone and computer at all other times. His writing "career" started as he penned about his escapades while skiing and has slowly progressed to freelance marketing and promotion throughout British Columbia. Interested in anything tech and gadget related, he has thoroughly enjoyed his transition of writing for AndroidPIT.

WhatsApp has become a universal communication app: several billion messages are sent every day through its services. After a short time, you can easily accumulate a ton of archived sentimental messages that you’ll either want to make sure to keep and save. However, with phones being lost, stolen, breaking, or some random freak of nature causing WhatsApp to lose your messages, it is advisable to make sure you back up on your own every so often. We’ll show you how.

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Fortunately, the developers of WhatsApp have made this pretty easy and provide a way for you to do this yourself without much hassle. All you have to do is head to the main view of the app where all your chats are showcased. From there, click the three dots in upper right corner and choose Settings. From there, simply choose Chat Settings and then choose Backup Chat History. This is usually done automatically and it will show the timestamp of the last time it was complete. However, without being able to transfer it off your smartphone, it may not be able to do you any good if you have any of the issues listed above.

© AndroidPIT © AndroidPIT

When connected to your PC via USB, you can head to the WhatsApp / Databases folder. In there will be all the backup files saved with the date that they were performed. The file with the latest date is logically the most current backup and you can copy and paste it to your PC/Thumb Drive/Cloud Storage, whatever you want.

And so, if you ever need to restore your chats, all you do is do the opposite and copy and paste your backed up copy of your messages from your storage space and place it in the WhatsApp / Databases folder. The next time you fire up your app, you should see all your backed up messages restored as per normal.

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