Bought a New Phone? 5 Tips to Switching Over Without Losing Anything

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A new Apple, Google or another manufacturer’s 18:9 aspect model catches your eye, and your old handset doesn’t cut it anymore. However, before leaping, it’s important you take a few precautions. After all, most of your important information is on your smartphone. Moreover, you don’t want to lose it during the switch.

Fortunately, upgrading from your old handset to a new one is a lot easier today. Due to the fact that most of your digital possessions are already in the cloud. The market has plenty of key apps that can make switching from one device to the next easy. Here are five tips that can make the change over easy.

Manual Backups

With so much of your data on your phone automatically backed up, transferring the information to your new smartphone is easy. During the iOS or Android device setup process, you will get a prompt asking you if you’d like to restore data from the backup.

So, what else is left for transferring? Some individual apps may require more attention, especially games, mail accounts and organizer. Check whether a program allows saving of the high-scores to another device or the cloud.

Some gaming apps use the automatic backups provided by Apple and Google; others don’t. Again, confirm with the developer if the game options and menus don’t have a clear backup status.

The biggest headache comes when you are switching over from Android to iOS – or vice versa. Unsurprisingly both companies want to make it hard for you to leave. Android backups will not work on a new iPhone. While iTunes or iCloud backups are not compatible with a shiny new Android smartphone. Plus, you’ll need to deregister iMessage when you are making the switch from iOS to Android.

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Other Data

Fortunately, moving contacts, apps, music and photos from an Android smartphone to iPhone really couldn’t be simpler – it turns out that Google is great at this stuff. But the biggest problem is moving your third-party apps, especially if you are moving from Apple phones to Google-powered ones.

The only Apple app available for Android users is Apple Music, but you can’t transfer your iTunes library or documents you made using Pages. Moving data the other way is much easier since just about all Google apps can be found in the iOS platform.

So, work through your apps methodically and ensure that everything you need is available on your new smartphone. If you cannot figure out how to make that happen, carry out a simple web search or email the developer for help.

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Use Automatic Backups

Unless you are planning to do a full digital detox, you’ll want to take everything from your old phone, including contacts and browser settings. The first step involves going through the apps on your phone and looking at how each program stores data. Moreover, look out for simple ways of seamlessly transferring the data to a new device.

In some cases, you don’t have to do anything. For example, if Google or Apple manages your calendars, contacts and emails, then all that information will automatically show up in your new device after signing in. Email clients like Microsoft and Yahoo store everything in the cloud rather than your device.

Built-in backup tools in iOS and Android now let you save just about everything you’d need to the cloud or computer. For your Android device, go over to Settings, System then Backup to see if the feature is activated.

For an iOS device, open Settings, tap your Apple ID name and then open iCloud. Furthermore, you can make backups via iTunes by connecting the iPhone to a computer.

Both in-built backup tools take care of most of your phone’s contents, including videos and photos, browser settings, and call history. For more information, both Apple and Google have full guides.

Subscription Accounts

Even after figuring out how you can move data from one phone to the other, you are not yet ready to move ahead. Next, you’ve got to consider the accounts that are already signed into on your old device.

Since some services don’t work on multiple devices, you may have to log out or deactivate some of them before they can function on your new phone.

However, this does not apply to every service out there. But this is true for subscription apps like HBO Go and Google Play Music. Therefore, review subscription apps and look at their policies online.

Security

Once you have had your new smartphone set up, it’s time you start thinking about your old phone’s security. You might have to use your smartphone in the two-step authentication process, where a code is sent to your phone if someone attempts to log into your accounts using a new device. In fact, most services and accounts, like Google and Facebook, now use this security strategy.

While the two-step authentication process helps improve security, it also brings in additional hassle to switching phones. Accounts that authenticate via SMS messages assume that you will still keep the same SIM and phone number – so you don’t need to anything here.

However, if accounts are authenticated via authenticator apps, you need to review the switch from one device to the next. You can find out more information about such apps by going through the creators’ web pages.

In other cases, you may have to disable two-step authentication for a short time to move everything. But, it’s still recommended that you keep both smartphones off until you’ve successfully logged into your accounts on your new phone.

Save to SIM

If you are not all that crazy about moving your contacts to the cloud, save them to the SIM card on your old phone and use the same card in your new smartphone. Also, depending on the number of photos you have on your phone, you can also save the images to your SIM cards and move them to your new phone.

What Next?

Once you have everything up and running on your new phone, you can safely reset your old one, after a few days to ensure that the move is successful. You can do this by going to the phone’s Settings menu than Reset.