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Synchronization
Over the past two weeks, we focused on making the sync process between your iOS and Android devices as easy as possible. We started by looking at keeping email, contacts and calendar data sync’ed, before recommending various solutions to replicate media content across devices.
This week we’ll take a more general approach and suggest various applications and services that save your content in the cloud and synchronize it transparently across devices and platforms. Whether you read articles and books on various phones and tablets, or need your notes and tasks sync’ed or simply want to keep track of your expenses across platforms, we’ve got the right apps for you!
Last week we gave you some advice on how to keep your data, email, contacts and calendar perfectly synced between your Android phone or tablet and an iOS device. Although these are essential elements to synchronize between your devices, replicating media from your iPad or iPhone to your Android device — and vice-versa — can also prove very useful.
Indeed, whether you run out of battery, lose your phone or prefer to use a larger screen, you shouldn’t have to worry about manually transferring your content to every single device you have. To make this chore seamless and transparent for you, we’ve selected a handful of apps and tools that will automate the process.
Many of us have devices that run on different operating systems, for example a work iPhone and a personal Android device. Looking at my specific case, I use a Samsung Galaxy Note II as my everyday phone and recently bought an iPad mini, which led me to explore ways of keeping the two in perfect sync.
In an always-connected world, it’s relevant for the two devices to communicate with each other and share data. Most importantly, having your emails, contacts and calendars synchronize from one device to the other is essential. This process should be seamless and transparent to you, so that all your content can be updated on both devices with no hassle. That’s what I will explore in the first part of this series.
It’s no secret that I have a lot of devices at my disposal including phones, tablets, computers, and even Google TV. I like that pretty much from any place in my apartment — or office, or coffeeshop I happen to be working at — I can use any of those devices to do things like read, check the weather, or whatever Internet-based task I have to perform. However, when it came to texting I was locked down to using my phone for a long time; all of that changed with MightyText.
Keeping all your devices synchronized with each other has always been a good idea as it lets you juggle phones and tablets, and continue working from the point where you left off without any interruption. There are plenty of apps available to keep videos, music and apps synced across all devices. However, syncing the app’s data is more difficult, especially if you are new to the Android ecosystem. Normally, this entails knowing the correct files that have to be moved between devices and their appropriate location — an easy feat for really knowledgeable users, but a caveat for most others.
To provide a straightforward way to sync app data, there’s a useful utility available only for rooted Android devices, DataSync. In the following tutorial, I will explain how to set up and use DataSync across multiple devices.
With camera lens and sensor specs getting more and more impressive, Android devices have easily become our go-to choice for point-and-shoot cameras. Photos on our phones keep getting better and better but the issue is with transferring and backing up those precious memories seamlessly.
The best place to automatically store photos is in the cloud so we can access them anytime and anywhere. Many apps and services offer this option but with only very little free space — 2GBs is ridiculous given the higher resolution sensors on cameraphones — and expensive additional space. Google+ will backup photos with no storage limit, except it counteracts that by downsizing the image resolution. Wouldn’t it be perfect if we could back those photos up to our Google Drive account, making good use of the free space offered with the reasonably priced additional storage? Well, there’s a simple app called FolderSync to do just that.
If you’ve rooted your phone, the process for backing up is easy:
- Get Titanium Backup,
- Use it.
But what if you haven’t rooted, or don’t want to, or can’t do so without wiping your device first? There’s a ton of data on your device, and although a lot is automatically synced to your Google account, some isn’t.
Let’s look at what you need to back up, and how you can do so.
Google announced their new web-based Android Market during yesterday’s event. It allows you to browse, buy and download apps for your Android device entirely through a website, available both on your phone and on your computer. After some technical difficulties preventing me, and a selection of other users, from logging in, I was able to bring my whole Android Market experience to the web.
The release of a desktop-based Android Market is something users have wanted for a long time and is part of a package of updates coming to the store. Google will also be rolling out currency-specific pricing so developers can set specific prices for certain territories to keep them in line with their overall strategy.
Depending on whom you ask, the lack of an iTunes-like app for transferring music, apps, videos etc. is either a mark of freedom or a lack of effort from the part of Google. While it is nice not to be confined to one particular desktop app to get content into your mobile, such an app can have some perks: a bigger screen, using existing playlists and libraries, data backup are some among them.
The doubleTwist application makes it possible for us to have syncing facility with a desktop app without the need for any wires. Read on to find out how to set up doubleTwist on your desktop and Android mobile.
