Moving phones is never a huge amount of fun – but we’re no longer in the dark days of losing all our contacts and sitting for hours manually re-adding them all when we move.
If you’ve got a new Android phone and you’re moving from an existing Android handset, there’s good news – it’s really easy to move your data across. Here’s our quick guide.
It’s also worth highlighting that many phone makers have their own transfer apps that work really nicely, such as Samsung Smart Switch – check your phone to see if there’s an equivalent! If you’re moving from an iPhone to Android, meanwhile, we’ve got another guide for you here.
How to transfer Android to Android
There are some quite easy steps to follow to transfer your data between Android devices, but the first step you have to take before getting started is to back up your existing device.
How to back up your Android
Follow these steps to ensure you have an up-to-date backup of your phone’s data before setting up a new Android phone
- Open the Settings app
- Scroll down and select System settings
- Scroll down and tap on Back up and reset
- Turn on the Back up my data setting
This will back up your data using a Wi-Fi connection – it’s worth giving it some time to run, since the first backup can take a while if you have a lot of data.
If you want to be extra sure that you’re backing up your photos and videos, we recommend doing this separately for insurance, using these steps.
- Open Google Photos
- Tap your account picture at the top-right
- Tap on Photos settings, then Back up and sync
- Turn the setting on
Again, if you’ve never backed your photos and videos up before this could result in quite a lengthy backup process, so be sure to let it run completely. Depending on how much you have to back up, too, you could find that you need to subscribe to a storage plan with Google, or Google One.
How to transfer Android to Android
Once you’re all backed up, you should be ready to get going with your new Android device – just follow the steps below.
- Turn on your new Android
- Tap to start the setup process
- Connect your phone to your Wi-Fi network
- When given the option of copying data, select A backup from an Android phone
- Switch to your old phone and open the Settings app
- Select Google, then scroll down and tap Set up and restore
- Choose Set up nearby device
- Wait for your old phone to detect your new one, then select its name from the list
- Tap Next, validate your lock code, and tap Copy
- Switch back to your new phone and sign into your Google account as prompted
- Confirm your old phone’s lock code then tap Restore to being the transfer
It takes quite a few steps, but once you’ve followed the process above you should be greeted with a transfer process – one that could take a little while to complete, depending on how much data you’re moving across.