The annoying @WindowsPhone restore process – Fix it please. (oh – Model: NOKIA 909? What does your 1020 say?)

First up: What does your Nokia Lumia 1020 say in the about bit? Mine says the model is the NOKIA 909. The early name of the 1020. This is possibly because it’s from Nokia and not the retail version.

Secondly, the main brunt of this post, to whinge about the WP backup process.

The backup and restore process in WP has been relatively swift and easy for me, switching from one device to another. Except today. I think having multiple WPs and cancelling the restore process and halting backup may have done something to whatever it is that MS does for saving a backup as transferring contents from my 920 to 1020 did not restore my messages at all. Only up to the point where I cancelled said restore on the 925/1020 when it forced me to log in to download an app. (It restored some random messages from December)

That’s simply not good enough. Here are some niggles I wrote about back in November:

• Ideally one step backup for everything on the PC/Cloud
• Ideally back up text messages when you want
• Restoring tile lay out (Helps to take a picture to remember what it looked like).
• Restoration of game/app processes not available.

http://mynokiablog.com/2012/11/17/how-to-back-up-messagesappspicscontacts-hard-reset-and-restore-process-on-windows-phone-8-nokia-lumia-920-very-nice-d-niggles/

To reiterate, I posted that in November. The niggles that existed then of course still exist now because unfortunately, there is only one being working at the windows phone team and that’s possibly some type of early primate. Clearly if it was a human being, it would be actually doing stuff? No?

Why should I only be able to restore when I first log in? Why should I not have the ability to backup text messages when I want and restore when I want?

Admittedly perhaps people won’t be switching phones as often as someone reviewing them but still, I expect it to work. That’s the whole point of there being a ‘back up’.

The settings restored OK. Most of the app list is there bar possibly some that are no longer in store (though I don’t know how I still have BBC News Mobile, I thought that got removed?) Contacts are always connected to the main account so that’s something I’ve never had an issue with. For pictures/videos, the auto-upload to skydrive has done its thing. I don’t particularly want to put all those pics over to the 1020. I’m gonna start a fresh :p. You can also use Nokia Photo Transfer for macs and the general Windows Explorer for PCs to drag and drop photo folders.

GDR3 rumours mentions the ability to restore backup via WiFi? (is not not done over WiFi already but over mobile data? Oh I do remember not being given the option to restore messages on the 820 when I didn’t have a SIM in it – though the 1020 prior to putting a sim in, it did attempt to restore messages after logging in to download an app. I don’t know, this whole update thing for Windows Phone is beyond annoying.)

Category: Lumia, Nokia