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I recently upgraded my phone and I am in the process of getting all of my old apps installed on my new handset. My internet connection is pretty slow, and I have purchased many apps through Amazon's free app of the day program. Is there any way for me to copy the apps from my original handset to my PC and then side load them on my new device? This would save me a lot of time waiting for all of these downloads to finish.

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You will need root access on your devices (well, at least on the old one) in order to copy the apps off it. Once rooted, you can use a number of 3rd-party "Backup" apps to save a copy of the apps to your SD Card, copy it to your PC, and then side-load them onto your new phone. The one I use is Titanium Backup.

  1. Root your original device. Look at sites like XDA-developers or RootzWiki for help with that.
  2. In Titanium Backup use the Backup/Restore functionality to backup the apps you need to the SD Card.
  3. On the new phone also install Titanium Backup app, enable side-loading (menu -> Settings -> Applications -> Unknown sources), and use the Restore functionality to restore the apps.

If you don't feel like installing a 3rd-party backup app, this can be done manually, although it's a lot more involved (installing Android SDK, USB drivers, using Command Prompt to find package names and copy the APKs from old phone and installing them on the new one.)

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  • I already have the Android SDK installed and USB drivers for both devices. How would I do this at the command line so I can avoid rooting my old device?
    – JadeMason
    Jan 5, 2012 at 15:28
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    You would still need to root the old device, since access to /data/ partition is not available without elevated privileges. Once rooted though, try "adb shell ls /data/app/" and "adb shell ls /data/app-private/" to get the listing of installed apps. Then by looking at package names you can figure out which app they represent. Then for each app you want to copy, do the following: "adb pull /data/app/package.name.here.apk c:\AndroidApps\". After that you can hook up your new phone and do "adb install c:\AndroidApps\package.name.here.apk" to side-load them.
    – Chahk
    Jan 5, 2012 at 16:14

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