Samsung Smart Switch

The nature of smartphone development has led to a never-ending cycle of upgrades, with people commonly replacing their mobile devices yearly. This is due to a variety of factors. For example, mobile technology is fragile, yet today it's used more often than desktop computers. This extreme overuse causes them to break down frequently. In addition, software is constantly being developed for "the next generation" of hardware, so older devices have a constant problem of being unable to keep up with higher power apps. Either way, there's a constant need to transfer items from old phones to new ones. Those who are upgrading to a Samsung Galaxy phone will likely use Samsung Smart Switch to get the job done. This powerful app allows the transfer of files from any old phone, including devices using Android, Apple iOS, BlackBerry and Microsoft Windows Mobile operating systems. Transferred items include contacts, messages, videos, photos, music, calendar events, apps and device settings. The program works three different ways. A user can transfer content between two devices wirelessly, if both phones have Bluetooth or Wifi capabilities and have the app installed. If not, a USB cable that connects the two devices (an adapter might be needed for Apple phones) will do the trick. Finally, content can be transferred to a Windows PC or Apple Mac desktop computer and then transferred onto the new device. Users have the ability to specify which settings and files should be transferred during the switch process.

I have tried to transfer from Samsung S8 to S9 both with cable and wireless, and it seems to go fine every time, but in reality a lot of content is not transferred. For example, no pictures stored on the phone are transferred (talking about the pictures seen in the "gallery", and note: I don't have an SD-card, so these pictures are those that are only stored on the phone). Also, a lot of apps are not transferred. And there's no warning that something hasn't been transferred. So this app is really not doing what it promises. I'm satisfied that my new Samsung S9 now looks almost like the old S8 (with respect to most content/apps/settings having been transferred). But this app is really unreliable, since I would have expected that all content actually was transferred when that was the promise.

Referring to the review that I just wrote: I claimed that the software wasn't transferring all photos and apps. It certainly is a fact that I have had to reinstall many apps, and that much content has had to be retrieved from cloud, i.e. not just transferred from the old phone. But I may have been mistaken about pictures not being transferred. I just noticed that the photos that I was trying to transfer are no longer available on EITHER phone, neither the old (Samsung S8) nor the new (Samsung S9). I find all my pictures, as expected, in Google photos and Dropbox (viewing on either phone), and these services sync pictures with the phone. But only a few selected pictures that I have taken with my phone camera (and spread out in time, so not just the most recent ones) appear now in the "Picture" folder. So, why these pictures disappeared from the "Pictures" folder of both phones I don't know. I'm not aware if i might have caused this error myself (by clicking on some setting without being aware of it) or whether it could be something that happened by software error, for example when using the Samsung Smart Switch software to transfer content. But I just have to comment that switching from an old to a new Samsung device actually wasn't as straight-forward as I had expected. But hopefully, for others this will work seamlessly, without loss of data. To be sure you don't lose anything, do as I did and keep a backup of valuable content (pictures and videos) on a cloud service that won't be affected of changing phones!