Transferring data to new phone. Google need to do better!

[ian87w]

Had an opportunity to upgrade a few of family members' phones. This really highlights the beauty of Apple iPhones.

From iPhone to iPhone: set up the new iPhone, let it do the local transfer with the fancy hologram QR code, let it do its thing, done. Everything is being copied over as if the new iPhone was the old one. Easy peasy. User is happy.

From Android to Android (to be exact, Xiaomi to Xiaomi): set up the new phone, Google showed a similar option like the iPhone to set up the new phone via the Google app and trigger "set up my new device" keyword. Note that this is Google's own feature, not Xiaomi's. Wow, fancy. It was doing its thing and done. But... Literally nothing was transferred other than things that are already on the cloud like GMail. SMS, calls, let alone all chat apps like whatsapp, Line, Wechat, none of them were transferred. Google only install the apps on the new phone, and that's it. Every app that requires login are reset as well, requiring new logins. Really poor experience. I ended up having to recheck, setup and transfer everything manually. User is not happy as it takes a lot longer than was expected.

To be frank, I never face this issue myself as I always set up my new phone as new since I like to tinker and start everything with a clean slate. But this is ultra annoying for the typical customer who wanted all their data to transfer over. And Google made it seems like that was the case, while in reality, nothing was actually transferred.

I really wonder why is it so difficult for Android to simply do what Apple had been doing. I think Samsung had the Smartswitch app, but I in my experience, that one wasn't really doing its job either. Why they are making it difficult for their own customers to upgrade to a newer phone? You would think they would want it to be easy.

 

[Klyster]

Smartswitch works fine for me, and I've used it annually for a while, the occasional hiccup comes with differing SD amounts and the odd password, my phones have looked the same, had the same contents as their predecessor for quite a while now.

I guess the issue with Google is the plethora of Android phones.

There's so many makes and models out there, on different versions, with different launchers, different hardware sets, diffent os versions etc.. considering this, they're probably not doing such a terrible job.

Apple have made it very simple for themselves but having less to cater for model wise, the unified thing, clever.

I'm surprised this comes as a surprise to anyone really, this has been an issue for over a decade.

Whatsapp can be a pain on either platform, I don't believe ios whatsapp puts the app on the new phone intact right?
You still need to reinstate the content right?

 

[ian87w]

Smartswitch works fine for me, and I've used it annually for a while, the occasional hiccup comes with differing SD amounts and the odd password, my phones have looked the same, had the same contents as their predecessor for quite a while now.

I guess the issue with Google is the plethora of Android phones.

There's so many makes and models out there, on different versions, with different launchers, different hardware sets, diffent os versions etc.. considering this, they're probably not doing such a terrible job.

Apple have made it very simple for themselves but having less to cater for model wise, the unified thing, clever.

I'm surprised this comes as a surprise to anyone really, this has been an issue for over a decade.

Whatsapp can be a pain on either platform, I don't believe ios whatsapp puts the app on the new phone intact right?
You still need to reinstate the content right?

I don't think the plethora of models should affect the Android file system. As a platform, Android has a baseline standard on how apps store their data. In fact, it's much easier in the early days of Android where you could just manually copy the folder structure for the app data intact into an SD card and transplant them into a new phone, and voila. Used to do that during the early days of whatsapp before the cloud backups. Google knew how Android and the apps work, so why is it so difficult for them to do a proper backup/restore system? The process that I went through literally did no transfer on apps data. I was baffled what it even did.

And it's not just whatsapp. Line, Wechat, literally none of them were transferred over by Google. On the iPhone restore, they were basically as if you didn't change the phone.

I guess I'm just ranting. The way Google communicated the transfer as if it transferred things, while in reality, it did nothing other than taking a list of installed apps and then instructed the new phone to download those apps. It's really poor experience. I mean I could adapt and manually do the work, but imagine a lay person wanting to upgrade to their new Android phone.

In the end, the iPhone user was happy with the Apple experience, and the Xiaomi user was annoyed and unhappy with the Android experience. When I tried Samsung Smartswitch a while back, it didn't do much either in transferring data. I remembered I ended up having to do everything manually, including SMS and call logs backups. Hopefully things are better on Android 12...

 

[Klyster]

Your experience with Smartswitch and mine are worlds apart. I've used it for years with no issue but try restoring a 512GB phone to a 64GB device and there are compromises one must make, and SD cards can make the whole process a bit trying.

Mine usually completes in just on an hour. I have used 512GB models since the Note 9.

Kies on the other hand, was a pain in the behind at the best of times, I'm glad I don't have to deal with that anymore.

Yes, smartswitch does download new app versions, I can see that being a pain for the minority who might like a specific version of an app, this can be mitigated easily on android, install the apk of said app, viola.

I also know from experience that WhatsApp can be a pain on either platforms. I have no experience with Line, WeChat etc...

I'm not discounting your experience though Ian, I'm just offering my experience which was contrary to yours.

There's always room for improvement imo...

Anecdotally..

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Transfer data directly from old phone in “Quick Start” takes forever

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[LIVEFRMNYC]

In the end, the iPhone user was happy with the Apple experience, and the Xiaomi user was annoyed and unhappy with the Android experience. When I tried Samsung Smartswitch a while back, it didn't do much either in transferring data. I remembered I ended up having to do everything manually, including SMS and call logs backups. Hopefully things are better on Android 12...

SmartSwitch has greatly improved. I noticed a huge change when transferring from the Fold 3 to S22 Ultra. It was almost as good as restoring from an iPhone encrypted backup. I barely had to sign in to most apps.

 

[ian87w]

SmartSwitch has greatly improved. I noticed a huge change when transferring from the Fold 3 to S22 Ultra. It was almost as good as restoring from an iPhone encrypted backup. I barely had to sign in to most apps.

Hopefully so, as I heard Android 12 should improve these things.

 

[edubfromktown]

Had an opportunity to upgrade a few of family members' phones. This really highlights the beauty of Apple iPhones.

From iPhone to iPhone: set up the new iPhone, let it do the local transfer with the fancy hologram QR code, let it do its thing, done. Everything is being copied over as if the new iPhone was the old one. Easy peasy. User is happy.

From Android to Android (to be exact, Xiaomi to Xiaomi): set up the new phone, Google showed a similar option like the iPhone to set up the new phone via the Google app and trigger "set up my new device" keyword. Note that this is Google's own feature, not Xiaomi's. Wow, fancy. It was doing its thing and done. But... Literally nothing was transferred other than things that are already on the cloud like GMail. SMS, calls, let alone all chat apps like whatsapp, Line, Wechat, none of them were transferred. Google only install the apps on the new phone, and that's it. Every app that requires login are reset as well, requiring new logins. Really poor experience. I ended up having to recheck, setup and transfer everything manually. User is not happy as it takes a lot longer than was expected.

To be frank, I never face this issue myself as I always set up my new phone as new since I like to tinker and start everything with a clean slate. But this is ultra annoying for the typical customer who wanted all their data to transfer over. And Google made it seems like that was the case, while in reality, nothing was actually transferred.

I really wonder why is it so difficult for Android to simply do what Apple had been doing. I think Samsung had the Smartswitch app, but I in my experience, that one wasn't really doing its job either. Why they are making it difficult for their own customers to upgrade to a newer phone? You would think they would want it to be easy.

Opposite experience for me. One note: long ago, I synched my macOS contacts to Google.

iPhone 8 Plus -> Pixel 4a was a slam dunk. Contacts, messages and other data came over no problem.

Pixel 6 -> OnePlus 8T was also a slam dunk.

iPhone ? to SE2 was a pain in the arse for two of three people I migrated. Some data did not come over (even when restroed from local backup on a Mac). I even wiped and tried multiple times.

I’ve had it with Apple ecosystem and IOS. Continue using Mac’s and none of their other products (except for keeping an iPad around to verify if I’m doing a reinstall on my Mac or want to look at Apple CC bill). Everything else is Android (phone), ChromeOS (“sacrificial”/cheap laptop), Kubernetes (clusters) or Linux (serverless/server/Raspberry Pi).

 

[ian87w]

Opposite experience for me. One note: long ago, I synched my macOS contacts to Google.

iPhone 8 Plus -> Pixel 4a was a slam dunk. Contacts, messages and other data came over no problem.

Pixel 6 -> OnePlus 8T was also a slam dunk.

iPhone ? to SE2 was a pain in the arse for two of three people I migrated. Some data did not come over (even when restroed from local backup on a Mac). I even wiped and tried multiple times.

I’ve had it with Apple ecosystem and IOS. Continue using Mac’s and none of their other products (except for keeping an iPad around to verify if I’m doing a reinstall on my Mac or want to look at Apple CC bill). Everything else is Android (phone), ChromeOS (“sacrificial”/cheap laptop), Kubernetes (clusters) or Linux (serverless/server/Raspberry Pi).

Do note that my issue with Google's data transfer tool is that it does nothing for 3rd party apps, nothing was transferred other than the apps being redownload Ed from the Play Store. Cloud based information like contacts is not an issue.