Google ‘Switch to Android’ makes jumping over Apple’s walled-garden easy (guide)

20/04/2022
By Ray Shaw
In Featured Guides

Google has released the Switch to Android app that seamlessly transfers Apple iPhone photos, videos, contacts, messages, music, call logs and calendar events to an Android device. It can even install any free Android Apple-equivalent apps as well.

The app has appeared on the US Apple Store. You can transfer wirelessly or via USB-C to a Lightning cable. If you think that is not cricket – Apple has had its Switch from Android app for years.

You can read more about switching here.

CyberShack view – Switch to Android is just part of the bigger new phone syndrome

One of the things we don’t test when we review new Android phones is the ease of switching from your old one. Essentially, you want to flawlessly copy all data and apps to the new one.

There are free and paid transfer apps (more likely the latter). Frankly, the ones we tried a year or so back did not work all that well. Of course, you have already handed over your credit card for the paid ones.

Here are a few tips

Make sure you use cloud-based email – Gmail or Outlook are best. Why? Because some brands have their own email, calendar, messages, and tasks apps that only work on their phones. Once you conquer that issue, moving this item is as simple as installing the Outlook or Gmail app on your new phone. So, there is no need to back up and restore email etc.
Move from brand-specific apps to Google ones
Backing up gigabytes of photos to Google Photos or other clouds is a poor way to do it. Why? Google Photos and most clouds have a small data limit (Google Photos is 15GB), yet you have a phone that may have 32/64/128/256GB or more storage. Backing up over the NBN and Wi-Fi is measured in megabits per second (usually from 5-10). A 4MB (megabyte) photo will take 3-5 seconds to back up and may reduce the image size/quality to a few kilobytes during backup. The simplest way is to use a flash drive (OTG – Android On The Go) or plug it into a Windows PC and use its file manager to copy photos from the DCIM directory (and restore later).

Logins and passwords will not transfer, so make sure you have these before setting up your new phone. We recommend LastPass free password manager Five free programs to save your bacon (guide) to record all passwords and logins.

Next, log in to your Google Account and back up your data (except those above) to Google Drive. This should include all your current apps (free or paid) and their data, but you cannot always assume that.

Some brand-specific apps may not run on your new phone

Some brands like Samsung and OPPO have backup apps that you should use if you have been using their Google substitute apps, and these are pretty safe.

There are some apps like WhatsApp you may need to back up to a PC/Mac first, reinstall the app and then restore the data from the PC. Or there may be cloud backup settings within the app. Whatever you do, use Google Drive for backup if given an option.

It is good housekeeping to uninstall the old substitute apps from your new phone and stick to Google Android apps.