Google has been very clear and vocal that one of the primary goals of the new Google Pixel lineup of phones is to lure iPhone users away from iOS and Apple to Android. While the success of the Pixel and Pixel XL looks strong and the phones are certainly attractive, users moving from one ecosystem to another as they would in this case have one big challenge: Data migration. Keeping all your calendar events, photos and videos and contacts are critical for migrating from iOS to Android. To that end, Google has launched an all new Switch to Android site which outlines exactly what those who want to migrate need to do to assure all their content is backed up. The key to all of it: Google Drive.
The step-by-step site has users first download Google Drive onto their iPhone then use the new Backup Wizard built into the app to backup their Contacts, Calendar events, and Photos & Videos. Once the content that you want to back up is selected, they are all backed up via Google Drive to the respective Google services. Your contacts go to Google Contacts, your calendar events to Google Calendar and your photos & videos to Google Photos. Because of limitations in iOS, in order for the backup to work, you must have Google Drive running and in the foreground on your iPhone (iOS doesn’t allow background syncs) and depending on how much data you have, this process could take several hours. Obviously, use Wi-Fi to do this as it will speed things up (and be cheaper!).
Once the backup is completed, on your new Android devices, sign into that device with your Gmail account that you used to do the backup on your iPhone. You must sign into your new phone with the same account as your data in Googleville is associated with your one account for privacy. Once you sign in, all of your data is configured on your phone and after the sync is complete, you will
Getting Google Drive for iPhone
have your contacts, calendar events and photos on your new phone.
The simplicity of using Google Drive as the main storage point is brilliant and it makes it somewhat error proof for users. That, ultimately, is what has to happen for new Android users to have a good first experience with their new phone.
One thing to note is that any email in your Apple iCloud account won’t be backed up in this process. You can manually add a iCloud account to Gmail on your new Android phone (which is a bit painful to be fair) or you can simply forward your iCloud email to Gmail (which is what I’ve done for mine and for my Hotmail account). Then all of your mail starts going to your Gmail account and you can get your contacts use to seeing your @gmail.com address.
If you are moving from an iPhone to an Android device, give this easy backup method a try. It could save you a lot of frustration.
