Easiest Way to Duplicate Home Screens, Etc. on Replacement Phone?

[Jimmy Bernstein]

I had major hassles migrating from Note 4 to Note 7. Main issue was that others reported that "Smart Switch" carried over their old home screen layouts to new phone, but this didn't work for me.
I'm hoping going from Note 7 to Note 7 will work better--is there any detailed guide for how to do it as painlessly as possible? (I wonder, in particular, if google's backup service is interfering with Smart Switch, but turning it off didn't help much last time.)

 

[dsignori]

I had major hassles migrating from Note 4 to Note 7. Main issue was that others reported that "Smart Switch" carried over their old home screen layouts to new phone, but this didn't work for me.
I'm hoping going from Note 7 to Note 7 will work better--is there any detailed guide for how to do it as painlessly as possible? (I wonder, in particular, if google's backup service is interfering with Smart Switch, but turning it off didn't help much last time.)

It might be worth it to take the 1/2 day, or day, to set it all up fresh on the new phone. It is a pain for sure, but many have reported various problems after using Smart Switch (from battery life to lag, etc).

It is more of a pain, but it is almost always worth it to start form scratch. Usually I would mention that it is a 1 time thing, but here is is a 2 time thing :-/ ...

If you MUST backup/restore, lots of folks like to use Nova launcher to backup home screens and Helium to backup apps and data ..

 

[maf113]

I did it twice and both worked fine. First one I used my PC with Smart Switch and did a full backup of my note 5. When I got the Note 7 did a restored and all worked fine. 2nd time was when I had a problem with the Note 7 and swapp3d it out at the Verizon store. The tech used Wi-Fi direct and smat switch to transfer and it all worked to fine again.

 

[ajb1965]

Supposedly Samsung cloud backs up home screen layout and wallpaper. We'll see how well it works in a week or so