How to seamlessly switch to a new Android
Do Androids dream of electric sync?
So, your world is fully integrated with your Android smartphone, but you are tempted by a shiny new model... How can you switch Androids without losing a big chunk of your digital life?
To find out, we needed a new phone.
The Google Pixel 4a is very tempting, but we’re suckers for cheap and cheerful tech, and grabbed an UMIDIGI F1 Play on a $200 eBay special. This smartphone has decent specs and runs stock Android 9 with extras like Digital Wellbeing included. It has no proprietary changeover apps like those you would get if you spend a bit more on a Samsung device for example. But it’s stock Android, and that’s ideal for this article.
First: Backup your old phone
The first step in setting up a new smartphone is transferring data from the old phone. But before you start, make sure both devices have fully charged batteries, are connected to Wi-Fi, and that your old phone is fully backed up. To check backup status open Settings on the phone - usually a cog icon if it’s not on the home screen swipe down twice from the top of the screen to open Quick Settings and look for the cog icon - then tap on Google/ Backup (or search for Backup in Settings to find it). Make sure “Back up to Google Drive” is switched on. This will create a backup of your:
• Device settings
• Contacts
• Wi-Fi passwords
• Call history
• SMS messages
• Apps and app data
Make sure that the Google account listed (usually an email address) is the same one that your phone logs in to. If it isn’t, tap on it and choose the right account.
Some manufacturers such as Samsung will also offer their own cloud backup options, but your best bet is Google because those backups will be compatible with any Android device. Give it some time to upload; overnight is a good idea if it is a new backup.
Set Up My Device
Transferring data between phones used to be a complex process, and the first step was restoring from the other phone’s backup, but recent versions of Android have changed that. The chances are that your new phone will guide you through a simple process using Google’s “Set Up My Device” when you first switch it on. Just have both phones ready and follow the on-screen prompts.
As smooth as it is, Google’s Set Up My Device can make mistakes, and our transfer between phones was missing some recent text and call information. This prompted us to explore other options, which you also need to do if your Android phone does not support Set Up My Device.
Android devices generally spend
their lives logged in to a Google account, which lets you easily copy a range of data to a new device via Google Backup. Just make sure both devices are logged in to the same account, go into Backup under Settings on the new phone, and select Restore.
Note that while some app settings will be copied to your new device, the apps themselves may not be. Just go to the Google Play store on your new device while logged in to your account, choose “My apps & games”, and you can access a list of all the apps you have on other devices. You can install selected or all apps directly from that screen.
SMS Backup & Restore
You can also transfer more types of data, with more flexibility, using third party apps from the Google Play store. For example, Google Backup does not transfer MMS messages. In previous articles we found that the free Backup Your Mobile app is a useful tool, but most things it does are now handled by Set Up My Device. However, we wanted only selected SMS and MMS messages, rather than all messages, on the new phone.
A bit of searching found the free SMS Backup & Restore app, which handles transfer of SMS and MMS messages, plus call history. SMS Backup & Restore proved exceptionally easy to use, and the option to select which messages to transfer was of particular value, saving a lot of time.
If you need a more powerful computer-based application for editing what’s on your Android device, we found Dr. Fone – Phone Manager from Wondershare very effective. It installs on a computer and is more complex to set up, but the instructions are very clear, and there is a two-week free trial which gave us plenty of time to sort out our SMS and MMS files.
Transfer your photos and videos
If you were not able to use Set Up
My Device there will be other data to transfer, such as photos and videos. The simplest way to manage this is Google Photos – if your old device is not already running Google Photos, find it in your device’s Google Apps, activate and link to your Google account to access unlimited photo and video storage for free.
Be sure to set Google Photos to upload on Wi-Fi only, then relax, your photos will be backed up to the cloud as long as you run the app frequently. On your new phone, or any other device logged in to your Google account, just open the Google Photos app and they will all be available, it’s that easy.
Be aware that if you delete a photo in Google Photos it will be deleted in the cloud and on all your devices. Use Delete Device Copy or Free up Device Storage on the Google Photos app menu to delete photos on just that device but keep them everywhere else.
What about music?
If you already subscribe to a streaming service like Spotify or Google Play Music you can just install the app to access all your music. But if you have your own music library that you want to back up and download to another device, Google Play Music can do that for free - if you know how.
Go to the Google Play Music website and instead of Subscribe click No Thanks until you get to the free version. You have to give a credit card number to activate, but as long as you don’t buy any songs Google says there will be no charges. Then install the Google Music Manager app on your computer from https://play.google. com/music/listen?u=0#/manager (there is also a Chrome app available), select your own stored music, and Music Manager will upload it to your music library in the cloud.
You can then access your music through Google Play Music on your phone or other devices, and can download copies to your device copies if you want to.
Finally, when your new device is set up, check out the TechLife issue 90 article on New Uses for Old Androids!