I just got an international unlocked 1520 (RM-937, Hong Kong version?! EBay.. ) and restoring the settings from my old L1020 Dev Preview onto the 1520 turned out to be a lengthy process. So for the three other people that may run into this, here's the full saga.
The steps:
- I made sure I had a recent 1020 backup
- Started the 1520, used my outlook.com account to set up, chose 'restore from backup', selected the 1020 backup. Wait for a looong time. I did this to be able to get the phone up to date and with WP8.1DP, but there may be a faster way, e..g by not even signing in. Not sure if that allows you to get the DP though.
- Restore process didn't restore my tile layout, I'm thinking because the 1520 was running WP8.0, not WP8.1. But apps are installing, email is loading.
- Looked for the Dev Preview app in the store. Found it, but no install button. Panic! Checked online, tried to install WP8.1 SDK, generally went mad. Realized that the backup process already installed the WP Dev app for me, which is why the install button was missing.. d'Oh!!!
- Downloaded and installed the DP, restart (waited a long time...)
- Went to Phone Update, checked for update, found, download, restart (waited a long time once more...)
- Went to Phone Update again, checked for update, found yet another update, download, restart (waited a long time yet again...)
- Time to restore from backup, couldn't find the option, searched online, and it's how I feared: to get to the restore from backup option you need to do a full device reset and start over. But: at least this will keep WP8.1 DP on the device
At this point I'm scared: the previous partially successful restore process automatically copied the old device name '1020'. Could the 1520 have made a backup of this Frankenstate (no tile layout restored..) under the old device name, thereby overwriting my good backup? Maybe not, because it looks like backups include the device type, but still a bit worrying.
The next problems are related to restoring to a device from a different country:
- Running into a problem after resetting from DP. It asks me 'language'? I select 'US English' or so. It restarts with English, but dates have Asian symbols next to them. WTF? Bug with the international version? Let's try a second reset, maybe I hit a wrong option (fingers crossed..). Ugh, why is resetting so slow.. Secure erase? We need a 'quick reset' option for at-home resetting..
- Checked carefully this time, gave it all the right region and language info. Still end up with foreign characters on the dates, maybe because this is a Hong Kong model with Hong Kong as default region. Still a bug in the DP, but understandable.
- Taking the plunge: restoring from backup even though the date and time localization is screwed up. Hoping for the best.
- After going through all the setup steps (home screen restored - hurray! Also: it looks terrible since my old beautiful 1020 layout now takes up only 2/3 of this wider screen..) I see that the region has been set to "United States, Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong SAR)". Well, that explains the weird symbols..
- I set region to 'English (United States)' again, restart, and voila - finally things look normal. Only took a few hours....
- Bonus: I like having an SD card slot, but formatting it takes FOREVER even though a quick format should have been enough. Edit: I think format crashed. Interrupting it after an hour left me with a working SD containing the necessary folders.
So in the end it worked, but for completeness I'll copy my older comments on what else is missing after a restore. These things were lost even whey I restored a 1020 backup onto the same 1020, and restoring to a 1520 lost these same settings.
- looks like notification preferences are not backed up (I get notifications for every single email again, which I didn't use to)
- several apps for tracking stuff (shopping list, weight tracker, gas mileage tracker) didn't save their data (ask the developers to update their app to support the latest WP8.1 backup method)
- some live tile customizations were lost
- apps that were removed from the store are irretrievably gone. Case in point: metrotalk, which still worked fine for me.
- the haptic feedback setting is lost (easy fix, but still)
- the night mode settings on glance are lost
- keyboard preference settings are lost (e.g. hide smiley suggestions, default keyboards lready on the device are kept, in this case Chinese)
SO on the plus side, it all works, even as you switch to a different device. Kudos to MS! But kind of bad: it's all incredible painfully horribly slow. It took literally several hours to jump through all the hoops. It feels very much like getting a Win8 PC and having to install 116 updates.
The steps:
- I made sure I had a recent 1020 backup
- Started the 1520, used my outlook.com account to set up, chose 'restore from backup', selected the 1020 backup. Wait for a looong time. I did this to be able to get the phone up to date and with WP8.1DP, but there may be a faster way, e..g by not even signing in. Not sure if that allows you to get the DP though.
- Restore process didn't restore my tile layout, I'm thinking because the 1520 was running WP8.0, not WP8.1. But apps are installing, email is loading.
- Looked for the Dev Preview app in the store. Found it, but no install button. Panic! Checked online, tried to install WP8.1 SDK, generally went mad. Realized that the backup process already installed the WP Dev app for me, which is why the install button was missing.. d'Oh!!!
- Downloaded and installed the DP, restart (waited a long time...)
- Went to Phone Update, checked for update, found, download, restart (waited a long time once more...)
- Went to Phone Update again, checked for update, found yet another update, download, restart (waited a long time yet again...)
- Time to restore from backup, couldn't find the option, searched online, and it's how I feared: to get to the restore from backup option you need to do a full device reset and start over. But: at least this will keep WP8.1 DP on the device
At this point I'm scared: the previous partially successful restore process automatically copied the old device name '1020'. Could the 1520 have made a backup of this Frankenstate (no tile layout restored..) under the old device name, thereby overwriting my good backup? Maybe not, because it looks like backups include the device type, but still a bit worrying.
The next problems are related to restoring to a device from a different country:
- Running into a problem after resetting from DP. It asks me 'language'? I select 'US English' or so. It restarts with English, but dates have Asian symbols next to them. WTF? Bug with the international version? Let's try a second reset, maybe I hit a wrong option (fingers crossed..). Ugh, why is resetting so slow.. Secure erase? We need a 'quick reset' option for at-home resetting..
- Checked carefully this time, gave it all the right region and language info. Still end up with foreign characters on the dates, maybe because this is a Hong Kong model with Hong Kong as default region. Still a bug in the DP, but understandable.
- Taking the plunge: restoring from backup even though the date and time localization is screwed up. Hoping for the best.
- After going through all the setup steps (home screen restored - hurray! Also: it looks terrible since my old beautiful 1020 layout now takes up only 2/3 of this wider screen..) I see that the region has been set to "United States, Chinese (Traditional, Hong Kong SAR)". Well, that explains the weird symbols..
- I set region to 'English (United States)' again, restart, and voila - finally things look normal. Only took a few hours....
- Bonus: I like having an SD card slot, but formatting it takes FOREVER even though a quick format should have been enough. Edit: I think format crashed. Interrupting it after an hour left me with a working SD containing the necessary folders.
So in the end it worked, but for completeness I'll copy my older comments on what else is missing after a restore. These things were lost even whey I restored a 1020 backup onto the same 1020, and restoring to a 1520 lost these same settings.
- looks like notification preferences are not backed up (I get notifications for every single email again, which I didn't use to)
- several apps for tracking stuff (shopping list, weight tracker, gas mileage tracker) didn't save their data (ask the developers to update their app to support the latest WP8.1 backup method)
- some live tile customizations were lost
- apps that were removed from the store are irretrievably gone. Case in point: metrotalk, which still worked fine for me.
- the haptic feedback setting is lost (easy fix, but still)
- the night mode settings on glance are lost
- keyboard preference settings are lost (e.g. hide smiley suggestions, default keyboards lready on the device are kept, in this case Chinese)
SO on the plus side, it all works, even as you switch to a different device. Kudos to MS! But kind of bad: it's all incredible painfully horribly slow. It took literally several hours to jump through all the hoops. It feels very much like getting a Win8 PC and having to install 116 updates.
Last edited:
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