The only thing I can think of is to make a full backup of /system, /data (and /sdcard) with something like TWRP, move it to a small, encrypted usb drive (bonus points if the partition on the drive is hidden and there's a legit partition as a decoy). Then you just have to restore from your backup, which you would already have locally. Save the backup elsewhere before you leave home if you don't want to lose everything if the usb drive is lost.
That is all a major pain in the ass and, as others have pointed out here, those that want to do harm are likely already doing this. I wouldn't expect normal folks to be able to do this, nor should they have to in order to preserve privacy.
I consider a few hours restoring from a backup while I sleep to be a pretty small price. To some people this might be a huge inconvenience, I suppose. I mean, think about it: Hours without access to Instagram. HOURS!!
When I arrive at the airport I use my phone for maps, my travel info, my contacts, my reservations, busses, trains, taxis, uber, messages with people I'm coordinating with, my travel notes, etc...
Or are you suggesting I should camp out in the airport for a few hours to restore my phone before I can figure out where I'm going and get ahold of my contacts?
Oh let me guess. Your solution so to print those contacts and maps (oh, no GPS to figure out where I am on that map) and use a pay phone (because I still need to re-install the apps I'd normally be using to contact people). Heck, I don't actually have phone numbers for > 90% of my friends. I just have them on Facebook, Line, WhatsApp. The only people I have phone numbers for are for people who've been friends longer than about 15 years, in other words before messaging
Maybe I’m just too old or unimaginative, but none of these objections seem like serious showstoppers to me. This is straying far from the original topic but now I’m curious: How would you survive if you were to accidentally lose your phone while traveling, or if it got stolen? One can (and should) be capable of being a functioning adult without a cell phone.
Why is this about survival? My commute to work is 20 miles. I drive because it's convenient, quick, and practical. I would survive without a car. I could walk for 6+ hours, work for 8 hours (snacking while I work), and then walk another 6+ hours back home. Or I could pitch a tent in my office parking lot and just live out of it during the week. It would be shitty survival, but doable, right?
It's absolutely possible traveling without a smartphone. I've done it plenty of times before smartphones became a thing. But smartphones make it so much easier.
This discussion is about taking a phone with you while travelling and be secure from border searches. Sure, you can leave the home but this is not the point of the discussion.
These are all problems you have created by over-dependance on a single point of failure.
It's honestly kind of lazy not to take precautions, particularly when it's that easy - you've already listed out exactly what I'd suggest, and it's how people muddled along for decades in the before-times, more or less successfully.
I would suggest learning how to read maps. It's really easy, especially in urban areas. Find the nearest intersection, and look where it is on the map. There you are.
Restoring an Android phone from N or later is very fast, if you've taken a moment to enable auto-fill. You still have to sign in to apps with the auto-filled credentials, but I prefer that to synced access tokens.
> How do you do this with an Android device without spending hours restoring it?
There are plenty of backup tools available on the internet, this isn't really a problem with Android. Personally that's what I do each time I travel abroad. Both because I might loose my phone/laptop and because on can never be sure what software/content is legal(or not) in this or that country.
Some people got jailed abroad for content/software that would be deemed legal in my home country, on their computer.
"There are plenty of backup tools available on the internet, this isn't really a problem with Android"
Name one and describe the process. So far everything I have tried takes hours and often loses a bunch of settings that need to be restored manually. It requires significant amounts of work. Also it seems most tools need a rooted phone
A simple search on Google will yield plenty of results, if you are not willing to do that or even explain which solution you tried yourself and what failed, I'm not going to waste my time recommending an alternative solution to your problem either. In fact I just provided you with another solution which you didn't bother acknowledging.
I have done plenty of research and I couldn't find a solution to backup and restore an Android phone quickly without losing all kinds of data and settings.
I have used the built in backup to Google and noticed that restore takes many hours and a lot of apps lost data and settings. It took considerable effort to get back to normal. Definitely too much work to spend on my first day of vacation.
A burner phone may work but then you don't have access to all your data.
`adb backup`. All you have to do is turn on developer mode to enable adb, root is entirely unrequired. You might need to log into accounts again, I'm not sure. Do note that this can take a while, depending on whether you back up your sdcard and how much storage is in use. You can choose to backup individual apps, or everything, to use encryption, etc.
If you install TWRP recovery (root is only required for the installation, not the maintenance), you can do a full-phone backup.
The problem is that a full backup on Android requires root, which breaks a lot of security guarantees and isn't even always possible. As far as I'm aware, there is no possible way for me to backup my non-rooted phone, wipe it and restore is as if nothing happened.
