Broken Screen Troubles

It happens. I broke the screen on my phone once. And now I broke it on my iPad. The device was working, but was ugly and deteriorating, as the tiny pieces of glass kept falling off. Initially I tried to have the screen replaced by a local independent phone repair shop, but they failed to secure the replacement part. Ultimately I decided to go with the Apple authorized service. "The screen on iPad is not a serviceable component. The policy is to replace the whole device." I was told. Fair enough. "Do you migrate the data from the old to the new device?". "This is an extra paid service.". I decided not to have the data migrated, as seemingly the iCloud backup (I subscribe to) should do the job. When setting up a new iPad there is an option to set up restoring an iCloud backup.

Unfortunately the restore option does not work.

I mean it works half way... falling short in the end. It restores the apps and the home screen layout. But for most of the apps it does not restore the content nor - most importantly - the security authorizations. So for the majority of apps you have to reconfigure them from scratch, performing all the authorizations (many of which include out of band authorizations like SMS codes etc). And in some critical cases restored apps are so confused that the only way is to remove them and reinstall, reauthenticating everything.

The most annoying failure has been the Firewalla app. After the iCloud restore it reported the missing security keys and the only way to get it back working was to re-authenticate the Firewalla devices. Which requires physical scans of the device's QR codes. So - the bottom line is - there is no backup in such case. If you are traveling and break the screen which requires device replacement, to enable remote monitoring / management you need to go back home and rescan the QR codes. For future I will try to archive the QR codes in my Google Photos album, but I'm still not sure that would be sufficient, perhaps it also needs you to be on the same local LAN network.

Amazon Kindle restored the content of the library (including collections and archived PDFs), but all of them required re-downloading (meaning you need to "click" each individual document - several thousand in my case). And then for the licensed books Kindle complained the license being exceeded (book accessed on too many devices), so I had to go to the Kindle Cloud and "de-authorize" the old (broken) iPad. Remember I just had a cracked screen glass. But of course for Kindle the replacement Apple device looked like an additional new device accessing the content.

Revolut almost locked my account until I quickly realized the app's confusion and removed it entirely, reinstalling and going through the full device authorization procedure which included taking a selfie, receiving an SMS code (so need to be in range of a phone network) and an email code (which required restoring my Gmail account, which required a second device authorization). 

The bottom line is - there is no backup. And a broken screen, repaired through a device replacement, may render you disconnected from most important apps and services. Especially when on the road, when such event is likely to occur. How to protect yourself? Invest in protection cases / bumpers. And probably carry a second device, which could be your old phone or a cheap one, which would be used as a "spare wheel" when in trouble,