[Galaxy Note II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] svdkillswitch:
Yes, I'm a noob. No, I can't keep things brief. I'm sorry video, I just can't do it. Hello XDA. Here's my pickle:

So, my camera's faulty, and I'm going to have to send my Note II back to Kogan. This is my first Android handset, and my first time properly experiencing and using Android (I moved here from a Blackberry Pearl 9100). I don't consider myself a base-line user, I'm competent with many forms of electronics and computing so I quickly settled into Android nicely. Thus far I've rooted, flashed recovery and flashed CyanogenMod 9 for one Android phone (I was the first in my family to make the switch, my sister got a Galaxy Wonder for Christmas and I flashed CM9 so she could have at least ICS for her phone) and it was a fairly straight-forward process, nothing too difficult (although it seems my father's Motorola Defy+ might be a bit trickier).

I'll get to the point, due to the camera being basically dead on arrival, I've got to send it back. I don't want to send it back with all of my personal information intact however, I'd prefer to take a full backup of it and then factory reset the device before sending it away. This is where the warranty clause comes in.

I can't root the device (this action breaks warranty) and therefore can't flash CWM to do a nandroid backup. After some reading, a nandroid sounded like the ideal solution but obviously I can't do that. See, I wanted to backup all of my data, including (if possible) apps, settings, accounts, the works. I really don't want to have to go through the process of re-downloading all of my apps (my internet connection isn't the quickest around) and setting everything up just the way I want it again.

I stumbled across the adb backup technique, and considering the N7100 shipped with Jellybean 4.1 and adb backup requires ICS 4.0+, I thought "Hey, why not. It seems pretty straight forward." I also figured it'd be a small learning experience, I'm thinking about getting into android app development sometime in the near future and needed the SDK anyway so I downloaded and installed that, fired up adb and ran the backup with the following parameters:

adb backup -f <FILE PATH> -apk -shared -all -nosystem

And it seemed to get stuck on the apk for GTA Vice City. So, after about an hour of sitting, I pulled the plug and tried again. This time it got to Angry Birds and got stuck once more. I decided to run it again, but with a different set of parameters, I thought "Maybe it's getting stuck with the SD card data."

adb backup -f <FILE PATH> -apk -all -noshared -nosystem

This time it got stuck on Bad Piggies. I pulled the plug once more and started searching for answers, but there's not a huge amount of discussion about the backup function, let alone specific to the Note II. I read some stuff about the One X getting stuck on certain parts, but they certainly weren't games like this.

And that's the thing that links them all, they're games. I'm not sure if that specifically has any effect on the process, but I'm beginning to think that trying to back up EVERYTHING so that I can restore my device to the same state it is in now is a futile effort. Without the ease of a nandroid 'snapshot', I'm running out of ideas. I could go through and delete every game I've installed and try the backup again, but I'd like to see if anyone else has any alternatives or explanations.

Here are my queries, don't feel like you've got to answer them all, they're just the questions I've got in my head right now.

1. Is there any known reason as to why adb backup gets stuck on these apks?

2. Is there a better way of creating some form of 'snapshot' of my device without rooting it?

3. Would Samsung Kies' backup utility keep my app and system settings after a factory reset (in that it'd load up Nova Launcher with all of it's settings, along with the few widgets I have, intact)?

4. Are there any apps that would do this? I've heard Titanium Backup will, but you need to be rooted to use that.

I'm starting to feel that just doing it the manual way is going to be easier in the long run.

With question three, I'm assuming that Kies won't backup any apks, and therefore when my phone is sent back to me I'll have to set it up again, download my required/desired apps and then restore my settings through Kies (which will hopefully also restore settings for apps like Nova Launcher, and even better, for widget applications like HD widgets). However, if I'm wrong and Kies DOES backup apks, I'll just do that, it's so much less screwing around and it does what I wanted it to do but didn't think it did in the first place.

Thanks XDA,

-svdkillswitch

(Also, first post!)

Other information:

Device: GT-N7100 (international)

Carrier: Unlocked, Telstra

Android version: 4.1.1, 'Jelly Bean'

Baseband version: N7100UBALJ1

Build number: JRO03C.N7100UBALJ1

Rooted: No