Microsoft dropped the ball with backing up.

[Christopher Lindsay]

What's the point of having me backup my apps if everytime I hard reset or replace my phone I have to delete all the apps on my SD cards and download them all again? This is beyond stupid. I understand the information in the apps are specific to the phone but why let me restore them if you're not going to let me restore them!?! WP is good but stuff like this blows my mind. Why does the OS lack so much polish?

 

[gapost]

I have changed many windows phones and if you sign back in with your Microsoft account, and restore from backup, it will reinstall your apps, accounts, texts, even start screen. Also, you can go to the store, My Settings, and then My Apps, you can see all your apps and tap the bottom circle to be able to select all you want to re-download. Actually, I think windows phone does a real good job of backing things up.

I don't put apps on an sd card, so maybe that makes a difference.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

I don't think this is important to many people so may be why its a lower priority to MS. I think most people would use the phones internal storage for apps first since faster access is more important for app performance than scrolling thru pics or listening to music.

As such the glass half empty from not automatically restoring apps to SD cards is really a glass half full for being able to have more apps than your phone could hold in its internal storage in the first place. So for many it could be like complaining about someone giving them a free wheelbarrow full of silver when they'd rather have gold.

 

[Maaz Mansori]

I agree with the others about storing apps only in the phone memory. Aside from performance issues, a problem with the SD card or the SD card taken out can cause problems with the app that sometimes require a hard reset to fix. I have approximately 150 apps installed and about 10 GB is used in my phone memory (including the OS, firmware, etc.). Store your pictures, music, videos, etc. on the SD card and move any existing ones from the phone memory to the SD card to make space. If you are a very heavy gamer, you should consider a 32 GB phone.

 

[Pranshul Sood]

What's more stupider is that Windows Phone can let upload videos through apps but can not let the same apps save aome videos to the phone! Facepalm.

 

[Madam ImAdam]

I recently had to perform a hard rest to factory conditions and then logged in and restored my last back-up.

I have all of my apps that can be stored on the sd card stored there. The restore actually worked out OK, eventually! that is it took a very long time, about 45 minutes for all of the apps and data on the sd card to be reestablished and resume functionality. The music app also took a bunch of restarts to recognize the music on the card.

One odd thing though, was that during the setup of the restore from my backup, it asked to send a security code to my mobile number, which I could not retrieve until after I had set up the phone... which I could not do without the security code! The option to receive the code through another method was broken, i.e. selecting "other method" did nothing - it just stayed on the same screen.

 

[Christopher Lindsay]

I recently had to perform a hard rest to factory conditions and then logged in and restored my last back-up.

I have all of my apps that can be stored on the sd card stored there. The restore actually worked out OK, eventually! that is it took a very long time, about 45 minutes for all of the apps and data on the sd card to be reestablished and resume functionality. The music app also took a bunch of restarts to recognize the music on the card.

One odd thing though, was that during the setup of the restore from my backup, it asked to send a security code to my mobile number, which I could not retrieve until after I had set up the phone... which I could not do without the security code! The option to receive the code through another method was broken, i.e. selecting "other method" did nothing - it just stayed on the same screen.

That happened to me. Had to use my girlfriends iPhone to restore my phone back to the way it was. And it's stupid slow if you have a bunch of apps. Why do I have to re download apps I already have installed. And for those who say apps run slower on SD card with WP, that's not true. Apps run the same. Why let me store them on my SD card if you're just going to delete them all anyway. Plus some of the downloads won't even happen over cellular signal. It's super stupid.

 

[ACynicalLamp]

Well when I did a reset it didn't restore my start screen. :/

 

[Christopher Lindsay]

Well when I did a reset it didn't restore my start screen. :/

This happened to me too.

 

[gapost]

Well when I did a reset it didn't restore my start screen. :/

So you all did a reset, restored from a backup, and it didn't restore your start screen??? I've done many restores (25+) on windows phones and whenever I restored from a backup, it restored my start screen. That's weird if it didn't.

 

[foxbat121]

Microsoft did provide an API in WP 8.1 to let apps to store small amount of data in the cloud (your OneDrive) so that when you restore it, you still have the critical app data from your cloud. This in theory can help a lot in back and restore. The problem is most apps haven't updated to take advantage of that.

 

[Jazmac]

In fairness, recovering on an Android device is iffy at best. Not that it makes you feel any better but just to say you are in good company. I suspect you could have problems with Apple as well but so far, my ipads always restore as did my iphone 5 without fail.

 

[Christopher Lindsay]

So you all did a reset, restored from a backup, and it didn't restore your start screen??? I've done many restores (25+) on windows phones and whenever I restored from a backup, it restored my start screen. That's weird if it didn't.

I've done a couple and it restored fine. Everytime I restore from my latest backup it never loads the home page the way I have it. I thought something went wrong so I did it multiple times. Seems like the problem is with the backup not the recover.