Fractured Thoughts On: Apple needs to fix Android to IOS

Here’s a scenario: you decided to make the switch from Android to IOS. You have a recently purchased iPhone fresh out of the box and charged and ready to go. The next step is to transfer data from your old phone to your new one such as your important contacts and pictures. Apple conveniently provides a method to do it: an app called Move to IOS. This is great, I can have my new iPhone up and running within an hour.

That is, if the process worked as intended. Here’s how it’s supposed to work: your iPhone provides a six digit code that you enter into the Move to IOS Android app. Move to IOS then connects over internet to the iPhone and after the connection is established, you can pick the data you want to transfer. This includes contacts, past messages and photos.

This connection is also where the process utterly fails. I attempted this last night and the first problem I encountered happened when I selected “transfer from Android” on my iPhone. When this option is tapped, the iPhone disconnected from Wi-Fi. I didn’t recognize this at first, so I went ahead and established the connection and got to the data transfer page. There, I decided to transfer all of my data and 20gb of photos/videos. I have the space I can delete what I don’t want later. I hit next and waited for my data to transfer.

“This connection is also where the process utterly fails.”

33% of the way into the process, I looked at my iPhone and realized it said LTE for its internet connection. Cue minor panic attack as I realize it is transferring over data, which I don’t have a lot of and overage fees are stupid expensive. Under Wi-Fi settings, I selected the network I had previously been signed in on and waited. Instead of pausing and continuing, the switch from LTE to Wi-Fi axed the connection. The Android side was fine, I could back out and restart the process but the iPhone was stuck on the transfer screen. I ended up having to restart the phone and go through the setup process again.

This time around, I made sure that the Wi-Fi was active on the iPhone before I initiated the Android side and ran into another problem: when I submitted the six digit code on the Android side, Wi-Fi would disconnect on the Android phone and it would be unable to establish a connection via internet. It took a while for me to notice this problem, but when I did I embarked on a several hour struggle with numerous restarts of both devices. This is apparently a known issue for some time with the Move to IOS app with numerous forums mentioning this problem. I can’t exactly say I was thrilled as I attempted numerous different recommended fixes only to have each one of them fail. I eventually gave up, instead manually copying over contacts and using Google Photos to back up all the media, but I shouldn’t have had to resort to alternative methods.

For Apple, a company that people often switch to for its user experience and interfaces, this is almost inexcusable. Most may not think the data transfer process is a big deal, but after switching over from Android to IOS this is one of the first things a user will experience. I understand the conversion has already happened, by purchasing an iPhone I’ve committed to the Apple life. But data transfer is just as essential to the user experience as the excitement someone will experience picking up the phone for the first time and turning it on. The user sees they are being treated right when they transition over, similar to how a company team might have a welcome lunch for a new employee. It sends a good message, so Apple please fix this process. There’s a lot of needless frustration over several hours that really don’t need to be there. If I want to move my photos and contacts from Android, it should be a smooth transition over. I shouldn’t be punished for wanting to carry over my virtual history from a previous phone. Unless, of course, Apple isn’t happy with the fact I picked Android before going to iPhone. Thanks Apple.

Fractured Thoughts On is a series of thoughts on a page that come in pieces from my mind. Thanks for reading this jumbled collection of thoughts. More to come.