I’ve never been much of a fan of Apple’s iPhones. They’ve always seemed overpriced, and far too tied down. You can only do what Apple allows you to do with them. Furthermore, the ecosystem is incredibly limited. Everyone has to use one of a very small handful of models, none of which are especially cheap (even the “budget” iPhone SE). And of course, you’re using precisely the same hardware as everyone else. Choice of protective case is not the high point of individuality!
But one thing this has all allowed Apple to do is offer a seamless backup and upgrade programme. If you lose or damage an iPhone, it’s relatively trivial to restore the phone in its entirety once you have your hands on a replacement device. Similarly, when it comes to upgrading to a newer model, it’s a painless affair, assuming you’ve made use of the iCloud.
The same just is not true for Android. While I enjoy getting a new phone as much as anyone, I really don’t look forward to the hours of work it will take to move across. Certainly the simple act of signing in to the device is trivial, actually getting the phone back to something similar to what you had before is incredibly time-consuming and tedious.
I’ve just upgraded to a new phone, in large part because I unfortunately damaged my previous one. Not enough to stop it working, but enough to mean an expensive repair. I opted for a replacement.
Google has started providing a USB adaptor with its Pixel phones to aid the set-up. The idea is that you connect a cable between your old phone and new one, and lots of your settings, messages and music are transferred across.
But this is really only a very basic transfer, and there’s much more that you have to do.
Now I appreciate that I use my phone for lots of services, and have more than 150 apps in total running on it. But it’s just such a painful experience even once you’ve backed up what the cable allows.
Here are just a few of the problems:
- Passwords – Apps just don’t remember them. You have to re-sign into nearly everything. Now Google does have a Smartlock service, and some apps work really well with it. Netflix and Uber worked seamlessly. But the vast majority of apps needed me to sign in again, in the worst instances, having to set up the various options as I’d had them before. Sure, that’s the app developer’s fault for not using Google’s service. Yet, it still feels needless.
- Signing in repeatedly – Even more annoying are the multiple apps that share the same user identity, yet require you to sign in separately. For example, I have a number of apps that use Amazon’s login (e.g. Kindle, Amazon Prime Video, etc). I repeatedly have to sign into each app. Again, that’s probably the app developers’ fault, but from the user’s perspective, it’s needless.
- Run every app – All of this means that to ensure everything is working, you have to run every single app.
- Apps that don’t work – Again, not really Google’s fault, but apps that don’t run in Android Oreo, just don’t get installed. It means that apps drop off in the transfer. It would be useful to have a list of apps that have not been installed because they’re not yet compatible.
- Layout not transferred – Since I have a large number of apps, I try my best to corral them into sensible folders. I spend ages doing this, and of course, when you set up your new phone, this is all completely lost. I understand that the layout of my new phone may be different and therefore screen real estate can’t be precisely replicated. But it’d still be nice to keep the groupings between phones. In the past, when I’ve had a phone repaired (and of course, reset afterwards), I’ve ended up taking screen shots of the way it was organised so that I can mirror my set-up later.
- Widgets are lost – Ditto, none of the widgets I’ve placed previously are carried across. I have to rebuild them.
- BlueTooth settings – While WiFi settings do tend to be carried across, you have to repair all your BlueTooth hardware. I realise that this is perhaps due to how the technology works, with unique codes attached to each device.
- Re-download media – While I understand why I have to re-download all my podcasts, because Google doesn’t have a default podcast app, so developers all do their own thing, that’s not true of music. Google has its own Music app, and it allows you to download tracks for offline listening. None of this is remembered, so you have to go through and re-download all your music, rather than it automatically restore itself.
That’s just what I can remember off the top of my head, and isn’t necessarily comprehensive.
I would say that, conservatively, it took me 5-6 hours to get my new phone up and running to my satisfaction. And that doesn’t include one false start where I didn’t realise that if I didn’t do the transfer from the old phone during initial set-up, it would never work. A factory reset was required, and I started from scratch a second time.
Undoubtedly Google is getting better at this. Every major Android release sees some improvements. And of course the diversity of the Android ecosystem means that it’s harder for Android than for iOS to do this kind of thing. But many of us are locked in a phone replacement cycle of between 18 and 36 months, meaning we all have to do this on occasion, it’s vital that this process is made easier.