[Discuss] iPhone vs. Android - the backup problem

[mark at buttery.org (Shirley Márquez Dúlcey)]

On 7/18/2012 9:45 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:
>
> The iTunes backup model is nearly identical to the Palm Desktop model:
> everything exists in iTunes.  An iPhone is a portable cache of what's in
> the parent iTunes.  Android is little different: it's a portable cache
> of what's in the Google cloud.  Their backup mechanisms are nearly
> identical: modified user data is copied to the parent at sync time.
> Their restore mechanisms are nearly identical: wipe the device, restore
> the base configuration (iTunes for iOS, adding a Google account on
> Android), then let the sync tool copy everything from the master.  The
> practical difference is that iOS requires iTunes and a USB cord while
> Android will chew up your air time.

There is one important difference.

An Android phone can be hooked up to your computer via USB and acts as 
an external drive. The entire Android system can be backed up to a 
computer that way, and there are applications to facilitate the process. 
I don't know of any applications to do anything useful with the files 
from Android but they probably exist.

A stock iPhone cannot be accessed as a drive. It can ONLY be accessed 
via iTunes. Unless your iPhone is jailbroken, the option of backing it 
up in any way without using iTunes does not exist.