How to Backup Everything on Rooted and Non-rooted Android Phone

Whether you want to root your Android phone or install a custom rom, it’s recommended to firstly backup your phone data. By backing your phone, so that if something does go wrong, you will not lose all of your data that you have most likely spent months or years accumulating. Now let’s find out how to backup everything, including apps, contacts, messages, photos, settings and more, on rooted and non-rooted Android phones.

How to Backup on Non-rooted Android Phones

1. Backup apps, contact, and phone settings

For users who want to backup your phone without using third party apps, you can use Google account to backup your apps, contact, settings, etc. To do it, go to Settings -> backup and reset. Make sure ‘backup my data’ and ‘automatic restore’ options are checked, and on the ‘backup account’, select the Google account to which you’d like to sync your data. Then go to your Google account and check all the ‘sync’ options available. Now, your data will be restored whenever you set up your phone with that same Gmail account.

If you prefer to use third-party apps, I recommend My Backup. This is a lite version of MyBackup Pro, which is a paid version of the app. This app is by far the most easy-to-use backup app for non-rooted device. You can backup your phone data to SD card or to cloud service at no extra cost.

2. Backup photos, music, and videos

As Google does not have a native backup service for photos, music and videos yet, so you’ll have to backup them manually by copying it to your computer or external hard drives.

3. Backup text messages

If you’re just concerned with your SMS messages, you can use a free app called SMS Backup+ to backup your text messages in the cloud. The app will automatically backup your SMS, MMS and call log entries to Gmail and store them under a new label ‘SMS’.

How to Backup on Rooted Android Phones

If you’ve rooted your phone then you can easily backup your apps, text messages, settings, etc, by using a backup app. In this case, I recommend you to use the Titanium Backup app. It is the most powerful Android backup app available in the market today. In addition to backing up the data to SD card, it can also backup to the cloud service like Dropbox, Box and Google Drive. Here’s the quick tutorial:

• Download and install Titanium Backup app here.
• Once installed, launch the app and press ‘Allow’ once a Superuser Request window pops up in your phone screen.
• On the top of the screen, select the ‘Backup/Restore’ tab.

• Click on the app you want then select ‘Backup’. Wait for it to prompt that the backup was completed successfully. Depending on how many applications you have installed, this process will take several minutes.

• The backups are stored in the ‘TitaniumBackup’ directory on your SD card.

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How to Install a Custom ROM on your Android Phone using ROM Manager

Installing a custom ROM is a great way to get the most out of your Android phone, but you need to find the right custom ROM for your device. Once you’ve found a custom ROM that’s right for your needs. The next step is to install it on your Android device.

There are different ways to install a custom Rom on an Android phone, like flashing in recovery mode or using an app, but the easiest way is through an app called ‘ROM Manager’.

ROM Manager is a must have app for Android root users who regularly tinker with their device’s ROMs. The app lets you flash your recovery to the latest and greatest ClockworkMod recovery. Besides that, it will help you to manage and install your custom ROMs and backing-up your current ROM.

It has both free and premium versions. The paid premium version includes additional features like automatic backups, web connect and incremental ROM downloads.

How to Install a custom ROM using ROM Manager

1. First, download and install the ROM Manager app on your Android phone.
2. After installing, launch the app and from the main menu, tap on ‘Flash ClockworkMod Recovery’.

3. You’ll be asked to confirm your phone’s model. Select your phone’s model and your phone will reboot and flashing CWM.
4. Now, before you go installing any custom ROMs, I suggest you to back up your current ROM. To do that, tap on the ‘Backup Current ROM’.

5. Give the backup a name and then click OK.

6. You will be asked to allow ROM Manager superuser access, tap on ‘Allow’ to grant this. The backup process can take a little while, so make sure you aren’t expecting any important calls.
7. Once done, reopen ROM Manager and tap on ‘Install ROM from SD card’

8. Find the folder where you placed the .zip file in. A box should pop up with three options like the image shown below.

9. Tick the ‘Wipe Data and Cache’ and ‘Wipe Dalvik’ boxes, and then click OK. The phone will now reboot and start installing your custom ROM. This might take a little while, sometimes up to 15 minutes, so be patient and don’t panic if the device appears to have frozen.

Once the phone has booted up, you will be prompted to enter your Google account details. Congrats, you have successfully installed a new ROM and you now have a brand new ROM to explore!

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Get Android L Style Notifications on Your Android Device with Floatify app

One of the most interesting features of Android L demos in Google I/O 2014 is the newly designed notifications, where a notification floats on top of everything else on your screen and you can either swipe it to dismiss it or tap it to respond. You will also be able to interact with them.

If you’re one of those who can’t wait till Android L becomes available or your device is not getting the Android L update, there’s an app called Floatify that can give you a preview of what it will be like.

Floatify is a new Android app that brings the same Android L style notifications to your Android device. You don’t need to root your phone to get the new notification system. The only requirement is the device must be running on Android 4.3+ or above because the older versions don’t support the floating feature.

Once installed and enabled, when you receive a notification, a summary appears on the lock screen. You can tap on it to see the full notification, or swipe to dismiss. You can also add bulk actions, like dismiss all notifications, to your home screen, to make life easier.

The app let you customize the style of notification, like where the pop-up will appear, animation, background, etc. You can also change the notification background color, size, position, opacity, text, icons, and more.

If you find notifications annoying when you’re playing a game or watching a video, there’s a ‘Smart Blacklist’ option that lets you disable notifications for selected apps. These notifications will reappear as soon as you close that app.

This app has both free and paid versions. The paid version will unlock all features like Smooth animations, Unlimited text filter words, Quiet hours, Wake screen on notification, Custom timeoutsettings for popup, Privacy settings for apps, Icon pack support, Backup & restore functionality, and much more.

If you want to enjoy the new Android L style notifications on your device, then Floatify is the best app for you.

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Turn Your Android Phone Into a Portable Scanner With CamScanner App

These days you can use your Android phone to do just about anything and scanning documents is no exception. With the phone’s built-in camera, you can easily scan any documents by photo shooting.

While taking a photo of your document may suffice for most, but it doesn’t offer OCR (Optical Character Recognition) capabilities which converts scanned paper documents, or images into editable and searchable data in accessible formats like PDF file. And therefore, you need the help of a third-party app which can scan an image into a PDF file.

One of the most popular mobile document scanning apps is Camscanner. It is a powerful android app that enables you to scan and digitize documents, images, and anything you want using your mobile phone camera. Simply take a picture of any paper documents, and the CamScanner can auto-crop image, enhance image quality and create a PDF file.

You can change the scan quality and brightness to export the best possible result. The scanned documents can be shared via Email, uploaded to Cloud, and printed via Internet. You can also manage them by tagging or searching.

CamScanner is available in Free and Paid version. The free version watermarks your scans and has advertising in the app. The paid version removes the watermarks and advertising.

There is also a tablet friendly version of this application, called CamScanner HD, which turns your Android tablet to a portable scanner. It supports tablet with Android version 3.x and higher.

Other CamScanner features:

• Advanced Document Editing
  Make annotations on documents with a full set of editing tools. Also adding customized watermarks are made available to mark your own documents.
• Collaborate on Documents
  Want to get feedback on your documents? Invite friends or colleagues to collaborate on documents. They can view, comment and exchange ideas on documents in groups.
• Secure Important Documents
  If you want to protect confidential contents, you can set passcode for viewing important documents; also, while sending document download link, you can set password to protect others from seeing it.
• Quick Search
  When you have plenty of documents, you can use Tags to categorize and easily find them. In addition, OCR for Search helps you find texts inside image and notes. Just enter one keyword, you can quickly find the document you want.
• Sync across Platforms
  Sign up to sync documents on the go. Just sign in with your smartphone, tablet or computer (visit CamScanner website), and you can view, edit and share any document.

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How to Password Protect Your New Google Play App to Prevent Unwanted Purchases

Google Play Store, or previously known as the Android Market, is the official app store for Android device that contains both free and paid applications. If you have linked up your credit card or Google Wallet to your Google play then you can easily purchase apps or in-app purchases within no time. But this might be a downside if your children gets hang of your phone and purchases any applications without your knowledge.

Fortunately, Google has a hidden setting to enable password protection and prevent accidental or unwanted purchases from the Google Play Store.

Previously, the app could only be set to require the password after a 30-minute window expired. But after being sued by a mother in New York whose child spent $65.95 in in-app purchases from an Android game without her permission, Google has pushed out an update to the Play Store that prompts for a password every time a purchase or in-app purchase is made.

So here is how to configure the new feature. Please note that you need to have Google Play Store version 4.6.16 or above for that. If you do not have it yet, you can update it by tapping the Build version in the app’s Settings.

• Open the Play Store app.
• Tap the Play Store icon -> Settings.

• Under “User controls” section, you’ll find the “require password for purchases” option which is set to 30 minutes by default.

• Tap on the option, and select “For all purchases through Google Play on this device”.
• Enter your password when prompted
• That’s it!
Now, whenever anyone tries to purchase an app, book or movie from your Google Play Store, they’ll need to enter this password. This also includes in-app purchases as well.

If you want to turn off password protection on your device, just follow the same steps above but this time choose ‘Never’ in the “require password for purchases” option.

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How to Lock Individual Apps on Android Using Smart App Protector

Android does offer various types of screen locks such as password, PIN, pattern, etc, that enables you to lock your phone so that no one can access to your personal data. But the downside is that there’s no built-in ability to lock individual apps. As we all know that there are only a few apps like gallery, mail, and messaging that require protection as they hold sensitive data.

If you don’t want to use the screen lock that come with your device because you find it annoying to have to type it in every time you unlock the phone. But still want to make sure that important apps on your device are secure, then you can use an Android app called Smart App Protector to lock any apps that you don’t want others to access.

Smart App Protector is one of the highly rated Android apps in the Google Play store that lets you lock individual apps using a password, pattern or gesture. The app also allows you to set multiple passwords for different apps. Now let’s see how to lock and protect individual apps on Android using Smart App Protector.

Setting up Smart App Protector

To get started, download and install Smart App Protector that is available for free on the Google Play Store. Once installed, run the app. At first launch, your password will be set to 7777 by default. Enter this password to access the app’s main page. You can change the password or lock type through Password and Pattern Settings. After configuring it, you can start adding applications that you want to password protect. To add an app, open the App Lock tab and then tap ‘+’ button. A list of installed apps will be displayed. Select apps that you want to protect from the App list and tap the ‘Add’ button.

Now whenever someone opens any of these protected apps, they will have to provide the correct password.

You can also set up password reset in case you forget your password. To do so, go to the app’s default settings menu then scroll down to see an option called Lock Initialization. Tap on it and select the type of authentication you want. For example, you can choose ‘Question and Answer’. So if you forget your password, and you enter the incorrect password for more than five times, the lock initialization menu will pop-up for you. It will then ask you for the security question you configured in the app. After providing the correct answer the password will be restored to 7777 and you can configure a new one from the app.

Smart app protector not only provides locks for the installed apps but also for incoming calls, outgoing calls, Wi-Fi, mobile data, and much more. The interesting feature of the app is that it can capture photo of intruder who trying get access to your device and failed attempts to unlock it.

If you’re looking for a great app locker then you should give Smart app protector a try. It’s by far one of the best app lockers that comes with a ton of security features. Apart from the basic locking features, the app also provides many additional security features. These include lock screen timeouts, lock screen rotation, and lock screen customization. You can also set lock time so that the phone can only activate at a certain time and remote lock by SMS keyword

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How to Track or Locate Your Lost Phone with Android Device Manager

Losing your smart phone can be a big problem. Phone these days is not only a mobile device that can be used for various tasks, but it is also used to store various types of information, such as contacts, messages, credit card numbers, passwords, and other valuable infos, and therefore, losing such an important device can be a real big problem.

If you’ve lost your Android phone, don’t panic because Google has released a new service called Android Device Manager which will help you to locate your phone even if you haven’t installed a tracking app before it was lost.

The best thing about it is that you don’t need to install an app to be able to track your devices. The only requirement is that your lost device is connected to your Google account, GPS services enabled and connected to the internet.

How to locate your lost phone using Android Device Manager

First, visit www.google.com/android/devicemanager on your computer web browser and log in with your Google account. You may get a prompt asking you for permission to allow Android Device Manager to use location data. Click on the “Accept” button to continue.

Then a map will pop up with some information about your device. If you already have a device with GPS/location services turned ON then it should automatically appear on the map otherwise it will report that the location is unavailable. So it is a good time to head into your device’s location settings and make sure your GPS services are enabled. GPS doesn’t drain your battery unless it’s actively being used, so it wouldn’t hurt to leave it on for good.

In addition to tracking your phone location, the Android Device Manager also allows you to ring a lost phone, remotely lock the device, and erase all your data.

Select the ‘Ring’ option, and your device rings at maximum volume, even if it’s set to vibrate or silent. This is particularly helpful if you’ve lost it somewhere in the house.

Clicking on ‘Lock’ option will bring up a dialogue box that lets you remotely create a new password for the lock screen while the ‘Erase’ allow you to wipe all data from your device and return it to factory settings.

If you are sure that you can’t get your phone back and you have sensitive information on it, then the Erase option function will come in handy. After you click Erase, a pop up will prompt you to confirm the action and tell you that the procedure will erase all of the data from your device and reset it. If you confirm the erase, the device erases itself and reboots. Once your device has been wiped, you will no longer be able to access it from Android Device Manager. Also keep in mind that a remote factory reset may not wipe external SD memory cards.

To be able to use the Lock and Erase functions, you’ll need to enable Android Device Manageron your Android device. (If your device is already missing, then it is too late). To activate it, go to the Settings -> Security -> Device Administrators. From there, check the checkbox next toAndroid Device Manager. You’ll be prompted with the following screen. Tap Activate, and you’re all set.

Android Device Manager won’t work for devices that are powered off, but actions you initiate while the device is turned off will be performed as soon as the device is back online.

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