Switching between android phones

[Complex Pants]

I am coming from the Pre atm, but on the off chance that my Pre breaks before I upgrade, I have been told that Sprint stores are running out of stock of Pre's so I would have to switch to a hero/moment. My question is if I buy/download apps for one android phone how do I carry them over to a new android phone?

Apple uses iTunes and Palm has their Palm account. Does android use a Google account or something similar?

 

[doogald]

Apple uses iTunes and Palm has their Palm account. Does android use a Google account or something similar?

Sort of. Yes, the phone is activated with a Google account, and that account is used to purchase apps in the Market. Any apps that you purchase using your Google gmail account on the phone will be in the Market on a new device, so long as you activate it with the same gmail account. However, unless I am mistaken (and I do not think that I am), any free apps that you install will not show in the Market on the new phone.

That said, there is a free app in the market called AppBrain that you can use to sync both your purchases and your free apps, and when you install it on a new phone, it can go through your apps, one after the other, to install them from the market on the new phone.

 

[hobbit11]

The apps follows your google account instead of your phone. This applies to both free and paid apps.

 

[Complex Pants]

Thanks guys!