Backup and Restore

[Dos101]

Sigh. It doesn't save your home screen layout? That's a major oversight. As far as app data, the apps that save their data tend to be from smaller devs ime. For example board express, some financial and health apps, etc. I have to double check to see if they save settings. As far as how this might hook into wp8's back up and restore, I'm not sure. on wp7, you have to go into each app, enter your sjydrive credentials and restore, which can be quite tedious.

Nope, major bummer. I recommend everyone take screenshots of their layout before they restore (Power button + Windows Home button) which is what I did. I haven't checked all my apps yet, but so far no data for my apps was saved.

 

[CJ Thunder]

Well there are always updates... How do they think business users will adopt if things like this are so tedious to do?

 

[KingCrimson]

We'll have to wait until WP9 to get features Android & iOS had 2 years ago.

 

[electricbopeep]

Nope, major bummer. I recommend everyone take screenshots of their layout before they restore (Power button + Windows Home button) which is what I did. I haven't checked all my apps yet, but so far no data for my apps was saved.

well there's a silver lining - screen shots. I remember when I had to reset my Samsung to install a memory card (remember that fiasco?!), I literally whipped out my camera and took pics of my start screen.

I don't like being made to feel like a simp for supporting WP. Why cant Microsoft get their stuff together? They're well beyond the point where such oversights can be defended - this is a 2 yr old os and the personalized start screen layout is one of the most important features of wp8, even more so than wp7, perhaps.

Thanks for detailing your experience, btw.

 

[Dos101]

well there's a silver lining - screen shots. I remember when I had to reset my Samsung to install a memory card (remember that fiasco?!), I literally whipped out my camera and took pics of my start screen.

I don't like being made to feel like a simp for supporting WP. Why cant Microsoft get their stuff together? They're well beyond the point where such oversights can be defended - this is a 2 yr old os and the personalized start screen layout is one of the most important features of wp8, even more so than wp7, perhaps.

Thanks for detailing your experience, btw.

Ya I did the same thing back when I jailbroke my iPhone. It's very strange how Microsoft thinks. Huge company, lots of money, undoubtedly smart people working there, yet they stumble on the simplest things. I hope this "good enough" approach is stopped very very soon. The time it takes to rearrange the start screen it far too long, not sure how regular joes and janes will put up with it.

No problem, I was curious myself since I might be exchanging my 920 anyways :lol:

 

[KingCrimson]

well there's a silver lining - screen shots. I remember when I had to reset my Samsung to install a memory card (remember that fiasco?!), I literally whipped out my camera and took pics of my start screen.

I don't like being made to feel like a simp for supporting WP. Why cant Microsoft get their stuff together? They're well beyond the point where such oversights can be defended - this is a 2 yr old os and the personalized start screen layout is one of the most important features of wp8, even more so than wp7, perhaps.

Thanks for detailing your experience, btw.

What iPhone data is backed up by iCloud? | The iPhone FAQ

iCloud backs up and allows 5 GB free storage for:
App data
Home screen icon layout and folders
iOS Settings (including Calendar accounts, Contacts, Favorites, Mail and Wallpaper)
Messages including iMessage, MMS and SMS (text messages)
Photos and videos in the Camera Roll
Ringtones

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/how-to/wp8/basics/back-up-my-stuff

Notes
Backup doesn't save apps or app data, but you can easily reinstall apps by tapping them on the App list.
Start will reset to its default set of pinned Tiles when you restore.

Really Microsoft? I have to rebuild my layout of 50 live tiles one at a time? Geez thanks for nothing!

 

[CJ Thunder]

Woah wait...no game saves!?!?

 

[shinygerbil]

Nope. No game saves.


I think the idea behind their implementation is that it's light enough that it can upload/backup automatically in the background without hurting your data plan.

But that's the wrong idea.

(I'm pretty sure they did announce that there was some kind of API for backing up to SkyDrive for games, but that means 99% of the Xbox Live games which never receive updates will never receive the feature. And either way it is up to the dev to implement.)

 

[Mr. Brown]

This is why Microsoft continues to fail in the mobile space. They don't get the little details right.

F.e.,

* no media scrubbing on the music & video players
* not saving app settings to SkyDrive
* Bing Local Scout has horrible data
* no notification center
* no local search

When people are out comparison shopping for smartphones they will not cut WP8 slack because it got going later compared to iOS/Android. They will simply see that iOS/Android have 10x more features and buy that.

WP8 does have media scrubbing.

 

[rockstarzzz]

I would say they did a pretty good job by not marketing what the phone cannot do! They only talked about what it can do and that has changed from WM times. /off-topic