CentOS - May 2019 - OT: android phone backup NOT to google cloud question

Dear All,

My apologies for OT question.

I wonder if someone of Android smartphone owners backs up their device 
and user/application data NOT to google cloud.

I just had to get new smartphone, and discovered that short of rooting 
device or unlocking bootloader and flashing one of "un-googled"
android
builds I can not find the way to back up everything. To my storage, NOT 
TO GOOGLE CLOUD that is. adb lets me back up system and applications 
(and data on add-on flash card), but not application data stored in 
internal storage (say, off-line maps downloaded by offline map application).

<rant>
I knew when buying android ("gogloid") I'm not becoming an owner
of the
device. I also know that after flashing one of "un-googled" systems 
(waiving off the warranty on that device) I will not get rid of all 
google code. There is proprietary chunk of it the android kernel... Plus 
proprietary drivers ("blobs" is the word android people use if I'm
not
mistaken). I also have seen google "appliances" on several
"big" (say,
class B) networks, not registered in DNS, carrying non-routable 
("private address space") IP addresses, which are resolved as google
by
DNS servers provided to DHCP clients inside these networks... So, no, I 
have no illusion about getting away from almighty big brother.

I just want my data backed up to my device, accessible to me and usable 
for recovery without need of network access, and existence of some third 
party servers on the network.

I know, Apple iDevices are a bit better data wise, and Apple has [quite] 
a bit better reputation, though these are still Apple devices, not yours ;-)

</rant>


Any advise, anybody?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Valeri


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On 15.05.2019 16:21, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> My apologies for OT question.
>
> I wonder if someone of Android smartphone owners backs up their device 
> and user/application data NOT to google cloud.
no problem, host your own nextcloud and get the nextcloud app;
also no need of having the contacts and/or calendar at google ...

and the most important:  you can select by this criteria; other things 
like camera, ... are less important, its a phone ...
> I know, Apple iDevices are a bit better data wise, and Apple has 
> [quite] a bit better reputation, though these are still Apple devices, 
> not yours ;-)
if better means overpriced then you are right;
good androids are for less then 200 usd, iPhones start at 500
usd
>
>
> Any advise, anybody?
>
> Thanks a lot in advance!
>
> Valeri
>

On 2019-05-15 09:37, Walter H. wrote:
> On 15.05.2019 16:21, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
>> Dear All,
>>
>> My apologies for OT question.
>>
>> I wonder if someone of Android smartphone owners backs up their device 
>> and user/application data NOT to google cloud.
> no problem, host your own nextcloud and get the nextcloud app;
> also no need of having the contacts and/or calendar at google ...
Thanks, Walter. I do host our own: owncloud (the one nextcloud forked 
off), and I do have my important data synced through it.

There are though on android device applications that you can not 
configure to store data in different location from what programmer 
programed in. These go to /data/data on android, and I can do nothing 
about these. Say, if I want that place to be inside what ownclud 
(nextcloud) syncs, permissions of android system will stop me from 
accessing it on the device anyway. Overcoming which will need rooting 
the system. Dough.

Thanks anyway!
> 
> and the most important:? you can select by this criteria; other things 
> like camera, ... are less important, its a phone ...
> 
>> I know, Apple iDevices are a bit better data wise, and Apple has 
>> [quite] a bit better reputation, though these are still Apple devices, 
>> not yours ;-)
> if better means overpriced then you are right;
> good androids are for less then 200 usd, iPhones start at 500 usd
>>
There may be yet even more "overpriced" device available some day:

https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

which has no proprietary code in it whatsoever, and being divorced from 
big brother (with uncounted and unaccounted for taxpayers money), it 
definitely costs what it costs to be built for small consumer base and 
without portion of cost covered by some other parties... Anyway, Apple 
device gives cost of its built for big consumer base without portion of 
cost covered by other interested parties... In other words, the old 
truth stands: you pay anyway (if not money, then by something else).

Valeri
>>
>> Any advise, anybody?
>>
>> Thanks a lot in advance!
>>
>> Valeri
>>
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
-- 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 09:21:34AM -0500, Valeri Galtsev
wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> My apologies for OT question.
> 
> I wonder if someone of Android smartphone owners backs up their device and
> user/application data NOT to google cloud.
I'm not sure if you would get all data, but wouldn't something like
mounting the phone with simple-mtpfs and then rsyncing it to a directory
on your machine (then moving it elsewhere if desired) serve the purpose.
Actually, I think even if you back it all up to the cloud, if you have to
restore, there will always be something missing. 

For example, I recently got a phone running Android 9 and though it had
copied some custom ringtones, it didn't see them. I had to re-encode them
specifying a bitrate to get it working.

Whether Apple or Google, they seem to make it harder to keep control over
your device with each iteration. I think it was Corey Doctorow who once
wrote something like, No one ever woke up and said, Gee I hope there's an
iTunes update that will let me do less with my device.

But I digress. Assuming this is all data which can be seen by a computer,
something like simple-mtpfs would let you copy it all to your hard drive.

-- 
Scott Robbins
PGP keyID EB3467D6
( 1B48 077D 66F6 9DB0 FDC2 A409 FA54 EB34 67D6 )
gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys EB3467D6

Walter H. wrote:
> On 15.05.2019 16:21, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
>>
>> My apologies for OT question.
>>
>> I wonder if someone of Android smartphone owners backs up their device
>> and user/application data NOT to google cloud.
> no problem, host your own nextcloud and get the nextcloud app; also no
> need of having the contacts and/or calendar at google ...
>
> and the most important:  you can select by this criteria; other things
> like camera, ... are less important, its a phone ...
>
>> I know, Apple iDevices are a bit better data wise, and Apple has
>> [quite] a bit better reputation, though these are still Apple devices,
>> not yours ;-)
> if better means overpriced then you are right; good androids are for less
> then 200 usd, iPhones start at 500 usd
>>
Um, Valeri,

   About iphones...

Excerpt:
An anonymous reader writes:
A recent vulnerability in WhatsApp shows that there's little defenders can
do to detect and analyze iPhone hacks. Some iOS security experts say this
is yet another incident that shows iOS is so locked down it's hard -- if
not impossible -- to figure out if your own iPhone has been hacked.

[...] "The simple reality is there are so many 0-day exploits for
iOS,"
said Stefan Esser, a security researcher that specializes in iOS. "And the
only reason why just a few attacks have been caught in the wild is that
iOS phones by design hinder defenders to inspect the phones." As of today,
there is no specific tool that an iPhone user can download to analyze
their phone and figure out if it has been compromised. In 2016, Apple took
down an app made by Esser that was specifically designed to detect
malicious jailbreaks.
--- end excerpt ---

<https://apple.slashdot.org/story/19/05/14/1938252/its-almost-impossible-to-tell-if-your-iphone-has-been-hacked>

     mark, happy with his flipphone cellular telephone....