Nandroid backups are a fairly simple solution allowing you to avoid loosing all the data on your phone. A nandroid backup is a specific backup type which stores a “full image” of the phone on your memory card allowing you to restore this image at a later date if required.

 

Now you will require a rooted phone and a custom recovery flashed to your boot for this to be able to work – however I somewhat anticipate that you already have this if you are looking at this article.

You will obviously also require that you have a memory card to store your backup image on – a full backup can range completely in size. It really all depends what you have on the phone.

 

If you have all of the above then the process of creation and restoration is reasonably straight forward.

 

Firstly you will want to boot the phone into the recovery menu, and navigate to the backup/restore section in the menu.

If you enter into that section you should be presented with a range of choices, usually somewhat along the lines of:

 

• Nand Backup
• Nand + Ext Backup
• Nand Restore
• Bart Backup
• Bart Restore

The option you are looking for is “Nand Backup” (or “Nand Ext Backup” if you have a partitioned SD Card).  Confirm this selection and the task should begin.

The backup should take around 5 minutes to fully complete – but again this completely depends on how many apps and how much data you have on the phone.

Once it is finished you will have a full Nandroid backup on your memory card to be able to restore if needed.

 

Restoring the backup is much the same as the process above with a couple extra points.

 

Firstly you are going to need to boot into the recovery menu, however you will need to do a wipe on the phone/device. So you will need to select the wipe menu, and then “Wipe Data/Factory Reset” and also the “wipe Dalvik-Cache”. Doing this just clears the phone of any software problems that could be replicated onto the backup when you restore it.

 

Next you will need to go into the backup/restore menu and select nand restore. Once selected you will need to select the Device ID which should begin with a “HT”. This ensures that you are restoring the correct backup on the correct device.

 

Select your most recent backup that should be on screen and that’s that. You will probably have to wait at least 5 minutes on newer phones probably longer on older android phones untill the full restore has been done.

 

It will show as completed on screen when done and all you need to do after that is hit reboot and your device/phone should be back in working order the exact same as when you made the backup.

 

One tip I will give you and that is that if you are performing regular backups, clear your legacy backups or move them onto an additional storage device. You will also most probably want to store your most recent backup on another storage device as well incase your phone is stolen or lost. This way you can put it back to the way it was before everything was lost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m sure we are all aware of the famous IOS screenshot capability and how it came on all versions of the iphone without any sort of manipulation required. Well now we can rest at ease fellow android lovers, as turns out android have started to put it into the main distribution.

Now I am unsure as to how far this new reach goes, but as far as I am aware any android releases that include sense 3.0 or higher will include this new feature. It can be activated by pressing the power button and the home button (much like IOS) but of course we all now that android is better.

The screenshot is stored within your photo directory/gallery where you can obviously go in and review it, look at it or share it whatever really takes your fancy.

Overall this sort of development is a big step up. I remember when I had a G1, and the Hero – where you had to actually have the phone rooted before you could even consider taking screenshots. Even with the phone rooted it turned into a bigger pain trying to run the app than what it was worth.

Maybe this is a turning point. I’m not going to say that Android was missing loads of points and it was awful, because that is far from the truth. Overall the android OS is one of the leaders in its field and it is something to be proud of. Maybe now we can get just those little things that it was missing previous – you never know

Recently I bought this android tablet really look forward to the power and mobility it gave, and I was so surprised. It didn’t just fill me with joy using it, I use it pretty much everyday and what excitement I get from using it. I currently have the 32GB model, quite a large jump from the 16GB one at quite a price – but well worth it.

So I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t try to root the thing. Luckily the tablet came with a version of Gingerbread on it, and luckily with a little bit of hunting I was able to find a modified apk that would allow me to gain full root access.

The modified apk you are looking to get is called GingerBreak and it is a relatively easy and painless process to getting things moving.

You will first need to download GingerBreak and move it to the SD card in your tablet.

Next ensure that USB debugging is on and that install from unknown sources is ticked.

Open your favored file explorer app on your tablet and locate the apk file

Execute the apk file to allow it to install to your device

Now run the GingerBreak app, and allow it to run the root procedure.

As long as there have been no problems you should now happily be the proud owner of a rooted Acer Iconia A500

Disclaimer: I take no responsibilty for anything you may have caused to yourself or your hardware. This is written as an advice or a guide. Every situation is different and you follow these steps at your own risk***