I remember the golden days of mobile phone devices when functionality was limited to making telephone calls and sending/receiving text messages. The first mobile device I ever owned didn’t even have the ability to send multimedia messages, although it could handle an array of amazing polyphonic ringtones which at the time was cutting edge stuff.
Flash forward twelve years, and we find ourselves in the current mobile device boom, enjoying device releases from a whole host of manufacturers with each one bringing additional functionality, more power and larger storage capacities. Back in my youth, If I lost my device or had to have a replacement for whatever reason, I only needed to worry about the ninety or so contacts that were on the phone. One of the only real downsides of owning a modern day advanced mobile device, is the constant need to back up and save data which now includes emails, applications, address books, photos and videos and even saved game data.
For those among us who own smartphones, more specifically; an Android powered device, and are running a custom recovery, the chances are that it is being used to create and restore backups as well. When chopping and changing between set-ups and trying out new installations, it is always good practice to keep a backup of a known stable state of the device in case something goes drastically wrong. With that in mind, it can be extremely time consuming if the user wishes to only restore a couple of files, or a specific part of a nandroid backup. Step forward XDA forum member Goddchen who is attempting to ease that pain.
Goddchen’s Nandroid Browser is an application which offers no prizes to those who can guess what its function is. The new app works to allow users to manually browse through the contents of any backup and then make use of any individual files that are contained within it. If the user is looking for a specific file within a backup, once found Nandroid Browser allows those file(s) to be copied and saved to a different location, opened directly on the device or be shared. Backups that are in the yaffs (.img) or ext4 (.ext4.tar) format are the only types currently supported, meaning that the browser should be compatible with most users custom recoveries.
Something which is highlighted by the portal admin at XDA, and is a very good point, is the lack of encryption on backups which allows applications such as the Nandroid Browser unsecured access to them without any permission checking. That lack of encryption shouldn’t detract from the usefulness of Goddchen’s browser and if it is something you may find useful it is available now on Google Play.
Download Nandroid Browser for Android [Google Play Link]
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