I just got a new iPhone 8 Plus and am eager to switch from my ancient iPhone 6. What’s the best and easiest way to accomplish the data migration?
Congrats on the new iPhone 8 Plus. Very nice, and I hope you’ll take full advantage of the wireless Qi charging capability; I know that I’ll be availing myself of that feature a lot for my new iPhone X once it arrives! You’re also going to be astonished at how much faster everything is with the iPhone 8 if you’re coming from an iPhone 6. A couple of years is a long time in smartphone evolution, that’s for sure.
In terms of the actual migration process, some of the data will migrate over if you are using iCloud and simply sign the new phone into your account. That’ll cover your Contacts and Calendar, for example. But old text messages? Your camera roll? Music you’ve downloaded? Those can be more problematic, and I know every time I migrate to a new iPhone I end up having to reselect and redownload every app too, which is more than a bit tedious.
Fortunately, I’ve been testing a slick smartphone migration tool called AnyTrans and it can do everything you’re asking. In fact, you can even migrate from an Android to an iPhone – or vice-versa, I suppose 🙂 – with the utility. They even have a handy How to Transfer Contacts from Android to iPhone guide you can download.
For our task, here are all the categories of information it can move and backup:
So your basic options are to do a complete clone of your iPhone to your new iPhone 8 (which I wouldn’t choose if you are going from a full iPhone 6 to an iPhone 8 with smaller storage capabilities) or to do a complete backup to your Mac system and then use that as a basis for the install/recover, or copy sections across manually. Since I like to know what’s happening, I’m always going to opt for manual work.
Let’s check Photos, for example. A click and you can see that AnyTrans does a very neat job of categorizing every photo on my iPhone, letting me pick and choose exactly which I want to migrate to the new phone:
Bursts take up a lot of space, I didn’t realize I still had 11 of them on my phone. Definitely want to go through those one by one rather than blindly copy them all onto a new device.
One other neat feature of using a tool like AnyTrans is that it automatically avoids copying duplicate content so if you’re not sure whether your huge folk song music archive (or acid industrial, whatever) has duplicates, a copy tool like this can help you clean up and simplify as you migrate. Darn handy.
Good luck with your new iPhone 8 – I can’t wait to get my iPhone X! – and good luck with the data migration, whether you stick to just using iCloud or use a tool like AnyTrans to simplify the job. If you’re curious, I suggest you simply download AnyTrans and give it a whirl.
However you go, you’re going to love your new smartphone!
Disclosure: AnyTrans sponsored this post. The opinions and instructions provided are my own, however.
I just migrated from an iPhone 6 to an 8, and it was seamless! I do not use iCloud … strictly iTunes backups for me. Messages, photos – everything … moved from one to the other like a breeze. I, too, have experienced difficulty with migration but not this time. Very very pleased.