If you are a power user of your phone then you might find that the product you purchased first is the one you stick with because you have so much invested in it. Many people and even businesses will do this. You have apple products at school or work or maybe another family member has Apple products and because you want to be compatible you don’t look at the other options you have.
I am going to come out and say it that I enjoy Android products more than other devices for phone and for Television viewing. There are some benefits to using Apple Devices but in all honesty the vast number of choices Android gives is not even considered by Apple developers. You can get very low cost Android phones to give to your children or maybe to bring on a vacation so you don’t trash your good phone at the beach and then you can get high end products that exceed Apple’s specs in many ways.
On the other hand there are a number of people that just can’t be bothered with lots of options in their life. They feel the comfort of buying their phone and then paying exorbitant prices for proprietary services. Ah who cares about them its time you move on and some of the things holding you back is how you will apply all your settings, files and services on your new phone.
The first thing to remember is that it won’t be easy but it won’t be that bad.
I say that because moving from similar devices is always pretty seamless. Whether you are going from apple to apple or android to android you don’t normally run into a bunch of problems.
The second thing you need to know is that iCloud will probably be one of your best friends when migrating however there are quite a few things you can do manually.
For Contacts you will need to save them to a VCARD format but once you do it is very easy to get them into your Android Device. Most often just downloading or manually copying the file from your computer to your android phone will prompt you to merge the contacts.vfc file with your current contact list on your android phone
Since you probably have lots of photographs and other files on your Apple phone you can do the same thing to transfer them to your Android Phone. The key here will be knowing where you want to put them.
Connect your phone to your computer and the USB Autoplay menu should pop up and ask you if you want to find and copy your images and media files to your computer. Go through the process and then you will have those files on your computer.
If you have cloud storage for files then you will need to download them if you want to transfer them to your new phone. You can do that from your phone or you can login to your cloud account and download them directly to your computer.
Remember copy protected files will normally cause you a problem. This is a problem many people find that their content just can’t be moved and they will need to rebuild it on their new service. To that I say you should have found a free resource instead of paying for it. People just don’t care when they are spending $0.99 here and $1.99 there but it can add up over time. Instead there are tons of free services out there to find music and videos and whatever else you want and if you use a third party service like Amazon then you never have to worry about your content being locked into your manufacturer’s services. I am not promoting for Amazon here I am just saying there are options out there that serve many different devices and don’t lock you in so use them.
Copying files from your Mac to your Android device is pretty simple just install android file transfer an app you can download free https://www.android.com/filetransfer/ and then connect your android phone to your mac and copy away.
Moving Contacts, Calendars and More
Using GMAIL to copy information is another tool. Since every Android Device will have a GMail account you can transfer your contacts to your new device by importing them to your account and then syncing with your phone.
Moving from iTunes to Google Play is not that difficult if you use their auto upload feature. Setup your google account then launch google music manager from your computer then in the options select automatically upload new iTunes content to Play and your content will automatically upload.
Installing Apps
Once you have your most basic information on your new phone you can start installing apps. Almost every popular app out there will be available on both android and apple phones however you will have to go through the problem of setting up accounts and passwords that you used before. Browser bookmarks can be exported to XML files but website passwords won’t likely be something you can transfer.
Final Note
We really haven’t gone over everything that you might need to do to transfer your life from one phone to another but there are many options and apps out there to help you get it done.
Basically you will be using two methods
Using a Cloud or Internet based account or service that can handle the upload because the product is available on both phones and then doing an import.
or
Manually dragging files between your devices and a computer. There are even options to directly connect your devices over wifi but those apps do cost money. Normally only about $5 each.
IMPORTANT remember that if you are giving your phone to a family member or selling it or even trading it in on a new one you don’t want to let go of it before you have backed everything up AND MOST IMPORTANT that you have not only wiped the phone but you have deleted all cloud or internet based accounts associated with it and removed your credit card info if the service required you to use one.
Don’t take anything for chance and for best results you really should destroy your old phone or sign up for a free mobile carrier like FreedomPop, RingPlus or maybe another low cost MVO Reseller and just throw the phone in your desk for emergencies.