Transfer files/settings to new phone.

[AC Question]

I'm using an LG G4, and just bought a pixel. Is there a good way of getting all my information (photos, music, texts, settings) transferred from the old phone to the new?

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! There's no single app that will transfer everything seamlessly, at least not for that phone. (Samsung has Smart Switch, but that's specific for Samsung phones.) Here are a number of steps you can take:

1. On the old phone, go to Settings>Backup & Reset, and make sure Back Up My Data is turned on. This will back up your system settings to your Google account, and it will also back up app data and settings for some 3rd party apps (but not all) -- it depends on if the app developer chose to use Google's backup system. You can see if your app does it by going to your Google Dashboard (google.com/settings/dashboard) on the web and clicking the Android section. When you first set up a new phone, it will ask you if you want to restore settings and data from a backed up phone.

2. For photos, take advantage of Google Photos backup on the old phone: https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6193313?co=GENIE.Platform=Android&hl=en. Once all of your photos are in your Google Photos cloud, you can access them anywhere, and download them locally if necessary. Google Photos gives you unlimited storage -- and since you're a lucky Pixel owner, you have unlimited storage at Original Quality, not just the lower resolution "High Quality" setting.

3. For music, take advantage of your Google Play Music library in the cloud: https://support.google.com/photos/answer/6193313?co=GENIE.Platform=Android&hl=en or https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/4627259?hl=en. Like photos, doing this will make your music accessible from the web on any device you're logged into, and you can download the music locally if you want. You can upload up to 50,000 songs for free.

4. If you don't want to use your Google cloud for some reason, then connect the old phone to your computer via USB and use Windows Explorer to drag and drop the music and photo files to the computer's hard drive (which is another effective method of backing up your data), and then copy those files to the new phone the same way. Photos taken by the Camera app are in the /DCIM/Camera directory.

5. For miscellaneous documents, use step 4.

6. For text messages, use an app like SMS Backup & Restore.