I'm considering switching from an Android phone to an iPhone, but I'm wondering if I have to reenter all my contacts and other info. Can I transfer my data from one phone platform to another?
There are some things you'll have to say goodbye to when switching smartphone operating systemsnamely, most of the apps you paid good money for. But the good news is that many of the services we use our phones forlike email, Facebook, and other social networking platformsactually store your data in the cloud. You'll also be able to transfer a lot of your other data from the cloud. Email accounts, for instance, are very easy. Just set up an account on your new phone; regardless of what service you use, your messages should automatically appear. Movies and music are also straightforward. Simply locate the files on your computer, and, if they are going to an Android phone, drag them to the phone when it's plugged into the computer. If the files are going to an iPhone, import them to iTunes, then sync.
Contacts and calendars are a bit trickier. The process is basically the same on an iPhone as on an Android device: Make sure your contacts are synced to a Google account, and then add it as a new email account on the iPhone. If you don't already use Gmail, you can set up a dummy account for the transfer and get rid of it when you're finished. To go from Android to iPhone, first figure out if your contacts and calendars are part of your email account, the way Gmail's are, or on the phone itself. If they're on the Gmail server, you can import them to the iPhone by setting up a new Exchange mail account, whether or not you're actually using an Exchange server. Enter your email address and password, and use m.google .com for the server. On an Android phone, just set up a new Gmail account, sync it, and everything should appear. If you're using a different email service, you can try setting it up as a new account on your iPhone, but if that doesn't work, you'll need to offload calendars and contacts to your temporary Gmail account and transfer via Google.
If your calendars and contacts are stored on your Android phone rather than in the cloud, the first step to transferring them is moving them to Google's server. Open Contacts and export them in the vcf format to an SD card. Copy that file to your computer, and import it to Gmail via the Web. Then follow the same Gmail process you used for email.
Going from iPhone to Android also means getting your contacts and calendars linked to Gmail. Connect your iPhone to your computer, sync your contacts and calendars, and export those filesusing the Group vCard format in Contacts and Address Book on a Mac, and the CSV format in Windows Address Book and Outlook on a PCfor uploading to Google.
Google has a site where you can transfer data from a Blackberry to an Android phone. Once you follow the steps there, you're ready to set up a Gmail account, complete with your old Blackberry data, on your phone. The one catch is corporate email: To get that onto your new phone, ask your IT department to switch you to an Exchange server.
Rachel Z. Arndt is the author of the essay collection Beyond Measure. Her writing has appeared in Quartz, The Believer, Fast Company, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago.
