Moving to a New Phone Safely

Both platforms offer a direct transfer that moves the bulk of a phone across in an hour. They are genuinely good. The problems are entirely in the small set of things they do not carry, and in the sequence.

What transfers cleanly

Apps, settings, home screen layout, accounts, photos, most app data. A direct device-to-device transfer on either platform reproduces the old phone closely enough that the difference is not noticeable.

Cloud-synced content arrives automatically because it was never on the phone in the first place.

What does not transfer, and bites people

Two-factor authenticator codes. This is the important one. Some authenticator apps sync to an account and restore; others store codes only on the device and are deliberately not included in backups. If yours is the second kind, transferring without exporting first locks you out of every account it protects.

Handle this before anything else. Check whether your authenticator supports transfer or export. If it does, use it. If it does not, add the new phone as a second device on each account, or print recovery codes.

Messaging history for apps with local storage. Some messaging apps keep history on the device and require their own backup and restore. Transferring the phone moves the app, not the history. Run the app's own backup before the move.

Wallet cards and transit passes. Payment cards generally need re-adding — the token is bound to the device. Some transit cards can be transferred and some must be moved deliberately before wiping the old phone.

Anything stored only locally with no account. Notes in apps without sync, offline downloads, voice memos in some apps, game progress in games with no login.

Passwords stored outside a manager, including things you only ever autofilled.

Physical accessories bound to the device — watches and similar need unpairing and repairing.

The order that avoids problems

One: audit before you start. Which apps hold something only on this phone? The authenticator, the messaging app, any game you care about, any notes app without an account.

Two: export authenticator codes or add the new device to each account.

Three: run each app's own backup for apps with local history.

Four: verify a full device backup exists, and check its date rather than trusting the setting.

Five: do the direct transfer with both phones charged and on the same network. Allow more time than the estimate.

Six: check the list from step one on the new phone before wiping anything.

Seven: keep the old phone intact for a fortnight. Do not wipe it, do not trade it in immediately. Missing items surface over days, not minutes.

Eight: then sign out of accounts on the old phone and erase it.

The two steps people skip

Signing out before erasing. Both platforms lock a device to the account it was signed into. A phone erased without signing out first can be unusable for the next owner and awkward to release. Sign out of the account, then erase.

Removing the old device from your account's device list afterwards, so a device you no longer control is not authorised.

Switching between platforms

Moving from Android to iOS or the reverse is a different exercise. Official migration tools exist and move contacts, photos, messages and some app data.

App purchases do not transfer. Paid apps are bought again on the other store.

Message history transfers with caveats, and quality varies. Verify rather than assume.

Subscriptions bought through one app store need cancelling there and repurchasing on the other, or they will bill on a device you no longer use.

Budget an evening rather than an hour, and expect to reconfigure rather than resume.

Verifying afterwards

Spend ten minutes before the old phone is gone:

Open the authenticator and confirm codes are present and generating. Open messaging apps and check history depth. Open the photo library and confirm the count roughly matches. Try a payment. Check that anything with a subscription still recognises you. Look for apps that did not reinstall — transfers occasionally drop apps removed from a store.

Then, and only then, wipe the old device.

If something is missing

Check the old phone first, which is why you kept it.

Check whether it was ever backed up. Local-only data that was never in a backup and is no longer on the old device is gone.

Restore from the device backup rather than the transfer if a lot is missing. Restoring a backup onto the new phone replaces its current state, so do it early or not at all.