[Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge Guides, News, & Discussion] NoFixedAddress:
Samsung Smart Switch takes ~5 minutes to restore contacts, sms, call logs, and media (photos etc). Periodically I remove media from my phone and upload it to my modem/router-gigabit-ethernet-connected Seagate Personal Cloud 4TB NAS HDD which comes with 4TB of cloud accessible from anywhere inc phone, which the NAS periodically (or manually) backs up to. I manually install 2-3 dozen apps from the apps stores. I'm not a widget-heavy user, i've brought it down to just weather/time and Telstra 24x7 data to monitor my 10gb/month. Got rid of my Internode widget after they released unlimited plans. And within an hour is the vast majority of it. I find myself randomly picking up the phone quite a bit for the next 24-48 hours thinking of something else to tweak, but minor. I don't have as much data on my phone as some others I admit, but I do wonder if it's a case of me having too little, or others having too much. I've seen the absolute pigs trough of a mess some phones are in and I wonder how the user copes without random eyelid flinching...

Honestly, the certainty of the highly successful end result is worth so much, it makes the effort seem nearly trivial afterward. Too many people are ready and willing to give their right nut for their phone to work properly without realising how relatively easy it can be. I've helped others go through the full reformat process and they've always come out with a changed view upon being able to appreciate the end result... not having their phone optimised to what I would have and generally being unfamiliar with the contents of their phone does inevitably increase the time spent though - but again, the end result is always far more appreciated afterward :)

I guess it just comes down to how committed are you to wanting a faultless 110% successful update first time every time? Would you prefer to play Russian Roulette each time and potentially end up using an equivalent amount of time getting nowhere, frustratingly trying to interweb a solution that doesn't exist? If you still object to the required effort, clearly you're not sufficiently committed.

By the way, I apply the same principle to my Windows computers. All on Windows 10. Each got a full reformat, I would never ever upgrade Windows. There's always inherent issues when upgrading. I also reformatted each one when Windows 10 got the anniversary update from 1511 to 1607. I also reformat my main laptop every patch Tuesday. I update them all each month with the standalone offline MSU install files (servicing stack update, cumulative patch update, adobe flash player update, defender updates). It means I only need to download them once and also get them updated faster as a result. A computer runs so much faster and without fault when it hasn't been subjected to update after update after update... I guess a phone isn't all that different :) And yes I realise some will think a monthly patch Tuesday reformat is overkill, but again with a practiced process, the time spent is more than worth the end result :)

I have no doubt some will vehemently disagree with my methods. All I can say is the outcome is a tangible benefit. Sticking to upgrading and avoiding a reformat does not have a tangible benefit. If there was no tangible benefit, I wouldn't do it :)