Backup Your Android Apps Using Astro

Last week my wife managed to assassinate her HTC Evo 4G Android based smartphone.  She uses her phone more than her laptop these days, so she has a lot of data she wanted to move over to the insurance replacement we got her.  Not a big deal since pretty much everything she wanted was already stored on her external SD card.

Where I ran into a problem was when she asked the dreaded question: "Can I transfer my apps from one Evo to another?".  Short of finding a way to relocate apps to her external SD card to be moved, I had no clue how to do this.  We haven't had to cross this bridge before.  She looked through her apps on the old Evo and decided there wasn't anything there she couldn't re-download manually and all of her apps are freebies from the Android Market.  So she decided to handle it that way.  But this got me thinking (and researching) is there a way to backup all of your apps on your Android device to easily reinstall on another Android device at a later time.

And with Astro File Manager, the answer is yes!  Astro File Manager is free from the Android Market (it is ad supported).  Once you have it downloaded, simply tap the the Astro Icon to launch it.  And you will be greeted with the main screen.  Now tap the button marked 'App Backup' (see pic below).

 

 Step 1- Tap the 'Application Manager/Backup' button.

Then you will be taken to a screen with a list of all of your installed apps.  On my Acer Iconia a500 it also lists apps that came with the device (I'm using the stock ROM and it's not rooted).  Simply scroll through the list and pick the apps you'd like to have backed up by taping the check box to the right of their list entry.  Or you can select the entire library of apps by tapping the top most check button (it's a Select All).

When you're done, simply tap the blue 'Backup' button at the top of the screen and it will proceed with the backup process.  Once it's complete you can navigate to the backup folder to verify it did infact backup what you wanted.  Last night I backed up 54 apps and there was a folder created with all 54 apps stored inside.  (It actually stores the APK files so you can reinstall them from this backup).

Here is where I bumped into a little trouble.  Everything I seemed to find online referred to the backup folder being automatically stored to the external SD card by default.  On my Acer Iconia a500 this is not the case.  It actually stored the folder on the 'SD storage' partition/directory where pretty much all of the other app data is stored.  Using Astro I navigated to the backup folder and copied it and then navigated to the 'External SD Storage'.  Astro refers to the device's native storage as 'Internal Memory'.  See the picture below.

 

Copy the 'backup' folder from the 'Internal Memory' folder to 'External SD Card'

Once the copy is finished I went back to the 'Internal Memory' folder and deleted the subfolder named 'apps' in the 'backup' folder to save space on my device.  Restoring apps was extremely easy as well.  Simply select the 'Application Manager/Backup' button from Astro's main screen and select the tab 'Restore Apps'.  And point Astro to the folder where your app backups are stored.

Now that we know how, it will be as simple as installing Astro File Manager on both Android devices (one to backup from the old device and the other to restore from the backup to the new device).  Astro is also a great file manager which can be extended through Market downloads granting things like Bluetooth Access and access to Windows and Samba servers as well.  The free version if ad supported but you can also purchase the Pro version which is ad free.

If you use another backup app be sure to let us know by leaving a comment!

And if you need to get your hands on Astro File Manager, swing by the Android Market at:
Astro File Manager by Metago on the Android Market