Back up android with adb backup

Question

With the backup command you could make a complete backup of android smartphones, now that I know only the pull command remains but it is not like the backup command, are there alternatives?

Answer 1

The adb backup command may be able to make a complete backup of an Android smartphone, but nowadays it becomes more and more useless:

1. adb backup can only backup apps that allow backup at all (an app has to declare allowBackup=true in it's AndroidManifest.xml or don't have such an entry at all). If it sets allowBackup=false then adb backup can not get any data on this app.

2. Cryptographic keys stored in AndroidKeystore can not be extracted, they are bound to the phone hardware. https://developer.android.com/training/articles/keystore

3. adb backup fails on Android 12+ if the app to be backuped has a targetSDK level of 31 or higher back will always fail. The only exception is if the app is a debuggable app (debuggable="true" in AndroidManifest.xml). But this is never the case for apps from Play Store or third party download sites). adb backup was marked deprecated years ago, seems like Google wants to finally cut it off. https://developer.android.com/about/versions/12/behavior-changes-12#adb-backup-restrictions

The only "alternative" exists if you want to switch devices and the old device is still functional. According to the Google Android documentation when using a direct device-to-device connection e.g. via USB a different mode is used that still allows to transfer apps and partially also their data.