Vodafone and Android OS

[arturox]

SWMBO has just moved to a Smartphone, it is run by Android.

I want to be able to back stuff from it to her PC for safety sake.

On my Nokia Smartphone this is easy peasy using a number of methods... Win file explorer, the 'Nokia Suit', or the App I purchased to get at everything, 'MobileEdit'.

Even though I have an Android Tablet, I don't find the Android OS particularly friendly or intuitively interfaced.

So she has a Vodafone Smart 4 Mini (VF 785), where does this poxy OS store Texts, MMS etc. As I can't find them anywhere on the phone using Win explorer.?

Thanks

Arturo X

PS: MobileEdit doesn't seem to be very happy trying to interface with Android phones... Maybe I'm missing something, dunno?

Ax

[jeffkinn]

Each phone will differ as each implementation of Android is slightly different, but on the phone I'm currently using, and HTC One M8, it's quite easy to save a new contact to any account set up on the phone or on the sim. I'm afraid I can't help with your specific handset but, in general terms, saving on a sim card is a poor idea. First of all you can only save a limited amount of info on the sim card and sim cards do go wrong.

I won't bother again extolling the virtues of saving to a proper account and syncing with a recognised cloud based service to safeguard them.

[arturox]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaghhhhh! you mentioned that place again.

But thanks for the thoughts anyway.  😉

Ax

[hrym]

If you don't want to sync with a Cloud account, you can still set your contacts to store on the phone, which gives you the flexibility of more number entries per sontact, a street address and email details.   All of those are useful on a smartphone.   From there, you can use my suggestion of exporting the contacts and transferring them to another device.  If you don't want to use Google Drive (even as a temporray vector), then you can send the file as an email attachment.

Having your contacts on the SIM is a very convenient way of transferring them ... until you have a device that needs a different-sized SIM.   Given that smartphones are much more portable data devices than they are telephones, to get the full use out of them, you do need to accept that they're permanently connected.   Yes, I'd never trust a cloud service with my only copy of anything, but they're a very convenient way of making your data portable.

[arturox]

As I mentioned in message 20, after installing a new copy of MobilEdit on another PC, the phone now interfaces with that okay.

The phone book is in phone memory, and I have an option to Export it in various file formats.

Her phone book is now backed along with other stuff in safe places...

And in answer to a previous poster, all our really important data is backed first to a NAS, then a portable USB (Spinning rust) hardrive, then stored remotely (Away from the house) on sizeable Memory sticks).

FWIW. In case you don't know MobilEdit, the export formats are:

vCard

CSV

XML

Native MobilEdit (.med)

XLS

Ax

[arturox]

Doing a bit more work on the phone in question, like tidying up some entries when I noticed something.

The little block of plastic and glass excrement has been uploading the phonebook to my Gmail account (Yes I do have one... Not much choice if you also have a Nexus tablet).

I don't remember giving the little sh*t device permission to do that.

Prompting a question or two...

1) Is there some setting on the phone I've missed?

2) How do I excise/delete/get rid of that upline phone book without is syncing back to the phone and deleting that as well?

Thanks

Ax

[arturox]

With regard to item (2) in my last post... to clarify.

I know I can get at them via my Gmail Dashboard, but specifically, if I delete them there, upline, will it sync back and delete from the phone?

I don't trust anything stored upline (As you already know)  Chocolate fireguard... So that's why I'm asking.

Though no problem to reinstall from the backups I've taken, but I've enough to do as it is without any extra annoyances...  😉

Ax

[thesoupdragon]

If you go into Account and Sync and tap on the Google email address it will open all the sync options, you can un-tick contacts but keep gmail and calendar sync'd if you use them?

[hrym]

The phone will default the contact type to Google (being Android, it assume this is what you want to do).  You need to break that link - I think there's an option to change the contact type in bulk via tick-boxes.   You then need to set the default storage to "phone".  If you simply delete the contacts on your Google account online, they'll re-sync with the phone and be gone.  Whatever you do, I'd make a backup first (I have a feeling you have already...).  Actually, that would be another way of doing this - export, delete, set default type correctly and re-import.

If you go into the sync options of your Google account under Settings on the main phone menu, yes, you can also change what's sync'd, but I wouldn't use that as the primary method of resolving this issue.  If you reset or reload, or change your phone, it'll all resync by default and either put yoru contacts back on Google or delete them on the phone, depending on which it thinks is the most recent.  You could get in quite a mess.

TBH, disengaging an Android device from Google is really quite tricky, but probably easier than getting an Apple out of iCloud!

[arturox]

Default storage is on Phone.

I've tried a number of ways to stop this toilet content, without satisfactory results.

Even eventually revoking Google access to the phone, but that also means no apps are updated and the phone moans about not being able to connect for them.

Then when I re-enable access, the contacts upline... Now of course empty, are synced back to the phone and Beep! no phone book, so I import it again, again, go to my Dashboard upline and... looke here contacts are there again.

I've wasted enough time on this rubbish, she'll just have to get on with it.

However, 'tiz been an interesting experience for me... When my Nokia smartphone needs changing, it is highly unlikely to be anything related to google.

Maybe I want too much personal control of my equipment and data, but that's my preference and choice.

The world has gone way past the sentiment of 1984 (Orwell) and we are now in the era of PK #####.

Ax

[jeffkinn]

I don't think I've ever come across anyone with such a fanatical aversion to anything that isn't directly owned or controlled by you. Did anything specific happen to create this situation?

Nearly all smartphones are designed to sync with online (not upline) services whether it's Apples iCloud, Google's Gmail and Google Drive or Microsoft's Outlook.com and OneDrive. The only potential exception is Blackberry but even they are designed to integrate with corporate email systems using Microsoft Exchange that are part of larger cloud based systems.

This isn't the stuff of Orwell of Philip K Richard (the real surname gets picked up the auto censor!) and no one us dreaming of electric sheep. They are invaluable tools and a significant part of the information super highway.