Migrating from iPhone to Android (Galaxy SGS3)

Many current iPhone users are waiting on the fence for the launch of the Apple iPhone 5 to decide if they should continue with iPhone or well, perhaps switch to the Android Camp, namely the Samsung Galaxy SGS3. Apple has lost the crowd favour and more people are definitely tempted by the huge screen for Samsung. Even if Apple increases the screen size to 4″, the Samsung SGS3 provides an additional [tippy title=”39% viewing area”]
iPhone 5 screen dimensions: 90.25mm x 50.6mm
Screen Area : 4566.6mm^2
SGS3 screen dimensions : 106.3mm x 59.8mm
Screen Area : 6356.7mm^2
% of iPhone 5 Screen : (6356.7-4566.6)/4566.6 = 39.1%[/tippy] as compared to the iPhone 5. Simply put, if you frequently watch shows on your phone, switch to Samsung to do your eyes a favour.

Well, its going to be hard to compare an unknown, yet to be released phone with the current market leader. Thus, putting specs aside, before making the switch you need to consider whether you’re willing to switch from the Apple ecosystem to Google’s. If you’ve been using an iPhone 3G for the past few years then there’s a good chance that you’ve accumulated a lot of apps and maybe even some music in iTunes. Apps are not shared between the Apple and Google Libraries. It’s probably more painful if you are in the United States, where if you purchased movies, tv shows, music, then its not going to be easy to just change over from Apple to Google. Furthermore, if you own an iPad, there would be advantages to maintain using the iPhone as the applications and media could be shared. However, for us in Singapore, there’s only the applications to worry about. Thus if you change between the two, your ‘investment’ would be worth nothing once you migrate. Just like the new dock connector which forces you to get new accessories, maybe its time to forego some of these old applications and look for new ones. The Android Play Store ain’t shabby and there are many equivalent applications if you do make the switch.

Making the Switch

So if you have decided to make the switch, the next step is one of the most annoying aspects of changing phones which is the migration of data. The two of us at GadgetReactor have been using Google Contacts to manage our contact list for years and it has successfully saved us so much time when we change phones, and to synchronise our data across multiple devices from Nokia, Windows, Blackberry, iPhones, and to now Android.

So, the easy way to get your contacts, calendar across to your new Android devices is to use an online server (something like the cloud concept) to manage your contacts. Since Android devices require a Google account, go setup an account if you do not already have one. Next, on your iPhone, Go to settings – mail, contacts and calendar – add account… Add your Google account as an exchange account and use “m.google.com” as the server. Leave domain blank. Once you’ve done this it should sync all your device contacts to Google contacts. You can check the output from contacts.google.com.

If you already have a pre-existing account, information that is there already would be synchronised back to your iPhone and subsequently Android device as well. We suggest that you login to Google contacts to modify those contacts before syncing them with your new phone. If you have duplicate contacts, you can go through them one by one and modify or delete extra contacts. Google also has a “merge contacts” tool that can attempt to do the same thing. To remove duplicates this way, you will want to click the “more” button with the downward arrow (near the upper-left portion of the window) while on your Gmail contacts page, a drop-down menu will give you the option to “find and merge duplicates”. This method also synchronises contact photos if you have them on your iPhone.

This method would also allow you to maintain a synchronised calendar, contacts if you are still using iOS devices such as the iPad. If you do not want to use the online sync method, other alternative methods include a one time export of contacts from iTunes or iCloud and then importing the csv file into your Google contacts. Or if you use a Samsung device, they also have an application KIES that helps you in the process as well.