It's been another busy month at Sprite and we've been tackling some of the more difficult issues around backup and restore on Android.
It's been a tough few weeks, but we've managed to solve everything we wanted to.
Of course while we were trying to solve the big problems with Android, we were quietly working away on the smaller ones as well.
So the latest release is feature packed.
Our biggest one is Backup and Google Sync. All the backup solutions for Android have the same problem of when you restore contacts, Google Sync seems to get broken. We were the same, Backup and Google Sync didn't like each other, but the good news is now they do! Our backup captures all your contacts, Google and all, but when we restore, we will only put back the ones that exist on your phone. Let's face it, if Google is protecting your synced contacts, there isn't much point in us doing it as well. The same goes for HTC sync. We do have a plan to allow you to restore synced contacts, but we're still working out the fine details, so that will be in a later release. Now that we have cracked the syncing issue, that gives us the keys to unlock some other doors to your Google data. Watch this space...
We've also added a bunch of support for Hero. HTC do things slightly differently to everyone else, so we've been figuring all that out. We've had it working for a few weeks now, but there were certain conditions that meant the restore could get corrupted, in particular on HTC scenes, so we weren't happy to release it. However, we've solved the problem so now it's going out the door. For the record Scenes will be included as part of the 'System Settings' and HTC specific applications (Tweet, Footprints, Plurks etc) will be picked up as part of 'Application Settings'. For Footprints we also capture the images and audio associated with a footprint, so that is backed up in a single place. Hero also deals with some of the Android contact fields differently, so we've updated 'Contacts' to handle them. If you're upgrading from a G1 to a Hero then all your data will be brought across perfectly.
Instant Messenger setting have been added can be found in 'Application Settings' and APN settings (for you rooters) are now captured in 'System Settings'.
Now onto multiple screen resolutions. There are a load of new Android devices coming out in the next few months (even some Netbooks!) and for the first time Android will be appearing on different screen sizes to ones you've seen so far. To get ready we've updated backup so it will work perfectly, no matter what size of screen you have. Minimal work really, just updating the water drops image on the loading and home screens.
We plan to put out another release very soon, as three week is too long to wait to get the latest features. It should be another big ticket item that we know no-one else has got :D
To find out more about Android Backup click here.