Moving to a new android phone...

[londonham]

I currently have a bionic, and I am very happy with it, but like many here I will be eligible for an upgrade at some point this summer. I was just curious about the process for transferring all your "stuff" (contacts, apps, settings, etc) to the new phone since I have never had to do this before.

Can Verizon do it for me? Do I back up everything to the SD card and transfer it to the new phone?

Like most of yall I have a ton of apps and a customized homescreens and certainly don't want to download everything again. So, what will I have to do once the day comes that I have to retire my Bionic? Thanks in advance.

 

[nelschroeder]

If you use Gmail and you store your contacts there it's as easy as turning on your new phone and logging into Gmail. It should sync your contacts and email right to your new phone. Apps are the same. Just go to the Play Store and log in then go to "My Apps". All the apps you ever downloaded will be listed there and all you need to do is reinstall them. This is what I did when I migrated from my Nexus S to my Galaxy Nexus. Either way Verizon staff should be able to help with instructions.

I believe you can back your apps to an SD card but you will probably still need to reinstall them individually. Since neither of my phones have SD cards I just reinstalled apps from the Play Store.

As far as custom home screens you will likely need to do that all over again. At least I did.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

 

[Mark_Venture]

If your phone is set to store contacts in Google/Gmail and you use Google Calendar too, then your email, calendar and contacts will re-sync when you add your google account to the new phone.

For apps, since Google Play keeps track of ALL apps you've ever installed (free and purchased), you have a couple of options... 1. Clean up your my apps list in google play, (from the my apps -> all list, you can remove those apps you no longer use), then when you sign into the google account on the new phone and open play, you can go to the my apps and install them one by one. or 2. Use something like Appbrain. Create an account or sign in using your google account, and it will sync a list of the CURRENTLY Installed apps on that phone. When you install AppBrain on the new phone, it will likely create a new list. So log into its web site, and copy all the apps from the old phone's list to the new phone's list. If AutoWeb Install is turned on for the new phone, all the apps will start installing (from google play). These two options will NOT bring your app data across.

A 3rd option for apps is to back them up with something like Titanium, and restoring them on the new device. There are apps out there that will also backup and restore app data. This is helpful if you want bring across your game progress, files, etc. BUT if the new phone is running a different OS version, you might be better off just installing everything from scratch and not migrating data.

Now, if you use a 3rd party app store, like Amazon's app store, you'll have to do those manually.

Next if you use the stock browser, you might have to worry about your book marks or favorites. I use Happydroid bookmark sort and backup (free in Play) to backup my bookmarks to SD, then bring them across (via dropbox, copying SD to pc, etc).

For SMS messages, I use SMS Backup + from Jan Berkel, it can upload your SMS & MMS messages to your google account, and restore them to your phone. It does call history too. It can't restore MMS messages to your phone though, but at least you can view them in gmail (it labels the messages as SMS).

 

[badbrad17]

What everyone else said. You may want to confirm that your Google account is set to back up your apps and data. It is on by default in Jellybean. You go to settings /backup and reset. It may be different on your bionic. You will still have all your apps connected to your account regardless but this allows Google to automatically restore all of the apps when you start the new phone without doing them one at a time.

You can also check out Carbon backup. No root needed for full backup.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

 

[doogald]

You can also check out Carbon backup. No root needed for full backup.

Carbon Backup does not run on Motorola devices, so he will not be able to back up the Bionic.

The issue with using any non-root backup tools is that when you restore to the new device, you will likely not be able to establish the link to the Play Store, so the app will not be able to be updated going forward on the new device.

 

[mamawM]

when i do get another phone, i'm gonna play the wait and see game. I was given a zoom for Christmas (and I LOVE it), when I activated it a bunch of stuff started automatically downloading. Turns out everything I had on my bionic automatically downloaded to the zoom. That's ok, but what I don't understand is why it was the stuff i had on the bionic and not the stuff i had on my acer A100.

 

[snowwy66]

i beleive the above post mentioned the reasoning.

jellybean vs. gingerbread. new technology with new software. not around when your older phone was.

 

[mamawM]

the acer a100 is a tablet and was on ics 4.0.3, bionic is phone on ics 4.0.4, why apps from phone and not apps from tablet? not a big deal, just curious.

 

[badbrad17]

Carbon Backup does not run on Motorola devices, so he will not be able to back up the Bionic.

The issue with using any non-root backup tools is that when you restore to the new device, you will likely not be able to establish the link to the Play Store, so the app will not be able to be updated going forward on the new device.

I was not aware that Carbon doesn't work on Motorola products. Why is that? Isn't it just software?

Thanks for this.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Android Central Forums

 

[doogald]

I was not aware that Carbon doesn't work on Motorola products. Why is that? Isn't it just software?

According to Koushik Doutta (the developer), Motorola's customized version of Android's backup software is buggy. It's right in the product description in the Play Store (on a PC web browser for Bionic users - it won't show up in the phone's Play Store.)