4 Tips for Migrating from iOS to Android

Kevin Griffin
Jul 28, 2017 · 3 min read

For context on this experience, feel free to read the introduction article about my experiment.

1. Pack your Bags

Before you make the switch you should decide how much of your apple existence you want to bring over. If you are fully committing to Android it’s probably gonna be everything; Mail, contacts, music, photos, messages, etc.. Since I’m only squatting for a few months I just chose my contacts and photos. Side note, this is a great time to do a little digital cleanup and delete some of those numbers you no longer need. Thanks to my single life, I had a lot first name only contacts that could be discarded.

My contacts and photos were solely linked to my iCloud account so I needed to import them to my Google account to even have access to them on my new Galaxy. This idea really goes for all your data, as you now will be primarily relying on Google’s services and applications to access your content.

For contacts, you’ll need to download a VCF file by going to iCloud.com on the web and logging in. Once you have that file you can upload them to your Google contacts list.

To gain access to your photos you do something similar to your contacts. Download the Google Photos app on your iPhone and upload those photos, videos, and special moments from your iPhone to your Google account. After 4 hours of uploading over 10K different memories of my own, I felt the Apple leash a little looser.

Now if you want to hold onto those precious text messages, that get’s a little trickier as you will need to download a 3rd party app. After looking into the process an inevitable headache didn’t seem worth it. I mean do you really want to remember all those embarrassing texts from last night and mistypes to your mom, anyways.

2. Remember to turn off iMessage

Now, this is pretty imperative if you want to keep having two-way conversations with your friends and family. iMessages are those messages that show up as blue bubbles on your iPhone, and they don’t exist on Android. So to make sure you still get texts from all your iPhone acquaintances, you will need to deactivate your phone number from your iCloud account. To do this just log into your account at appleid.apple.com and remove your phone number from the “Reachable At” field. You will also want to make sure any device you had iMessage turned on is now switched off, and lucky me that’s the triumvirate; iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

3. Make the Trade

I found physically transferring your service account from one device to the other, relatively easy, as long as you stay within your network. Since my iPhone SIM card is the same size as the Galaxy 8, the device I chose to do this experiment with, all I had to do was call up my AT&T rep and give them my IMEI number for the new device. 20 minutes later, of which half that time was spent letting Juan, the AT&T rep down nicely, that I am not interested in upgrading my account, my new device was registered and I had kicked this experiment into first gear.

4. Find your Bearings

Once you switch your SIM card with some surgical finesse and turn your device on, it will take you through its registration flow. Again I suggest you lean heavy on Google here for that is the easiest method to access your previous life. Now that you are in uncharted territory my last suggestion, before you start rebuilding your existence, is to open the settings menu and orient yourself with all its options. Since all Android devices are not created equal. this will help explain what you can and cannot do with your phone. For instance, I discovered I could unlock my phone with just my retinas, Mission Impossible style. Complete customization and control is the name of the game when it comes to Android and I will cover more on that subject in a future post.

Kevin Griffin

Written by

User Experience Designer @DraftKings

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade