[olug] Android phone backup question

[Dan Linder]

I've finally entered the smart-phone era and recently got a Droid X.

When I activated the phone, I tied it to my "dan at linder.org" account - a
Google Apps hosted e-mail domain and things have worked fairly well.  I have
been able to install apps via the on-phone Android and Amazon marketplace
apps.

Unfortunately, using a non "@gmail.com" e-mail address seems to have it's
own set of problems.  For instance, when I use my computer to browse to the
Android market place it won't let me login with the @linder.org account, and
my gmail address isn't associated with a device...

>From what I read, I need to re-associate my phone with the
@gmail.comaddress, but that requires a factory reset.  When I do that,
I'll loose my
purchased apps... :-(

I am going to write the support lines for the purchased apps providers to
see if they can move the app, but my main question is this:

Is there a way to backup the apps on my droid, then re-install them after
I've reset it?  Is the installation "apk" file stored on the phone somewhere
that I can use, or is there more to the app installation process?

Thanks in advance!

Dan

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