Steps for Switching to a New Phone
1. Backup/Transfer Photos and Contacts
If you have an SD card: This step is a piece of cake if you’ve got everything saved on an SD card that is compatible with both devices. Simply ensure that whatever media and contact information you need is saved to your external storage, then pop the new card into your new phone and you’re done!
If you do not have an SD card: If you don’t have a compatible SD card, then your next best bet is probably going to be using the cloud to transfer contacts and photos from one device to another. If you have a Windows PC at home, then you’ll probably want to use OneDrive, but it isn’t the only option. Dropbox is another popular server and both Google and Apple have their own cloud storage as well. Uploading your photos might take some time, so start this process first and then move on to other steps. Just be sure to remember to download the photos to your new phone!
For syncing contacts, I prefer to use a security app like Lookout, which will transfer all of your contact information and also automatically upload and backup both your contacts and photos. You can get the backup for free, and the app does all the work for you. Most antivirus/scanning apps have a feature like this, so check with whatever app you prefer to see if it has this capability.
2. Set up Wifi on New Device
You’re going to be doing a lot of downloading on your new device today, so unless you want to eat up all of your data I recommend first setting the Wifi password and settings. It only takes a sec and you’ll save yourself a headache later this month.
3. Sync Accounts on New Phone
Most phones will prompt you to set all of this up at first startup, but if it does not then you will want to take few minutes and set up your email, social media, cloud, app store and other accounts on your device. Sign in with all of them to double check settings and save the passwords if you want. This should make the other steps simpler in the long run.
4. Download Widgets and Apps
Take a few minutes and go through your purchased apps list on whatever app store you use and download the apps you think you’ll need. If you use Amazon or another third-party store, remember to go into the settings and uncheck the box to allow downloads from the site. I’d also recommend taking a minute and signing in to whichever apps require accounts and such to make sure everything is working properly.
5. Customize Wallpaper/Lockscreen Settings
Configure the images and password for your lockscreen, and customize your wallpaper. This can do wonders to make the phone seem less like a factory device and more familiar.
6. Configure screens
Now you’ve got all of your widgets and apps, start setting up your screens just the way you like. You can either reference your old device and set it up exactly the same or go with an entirely new layout!
7. Set up Ringtones and Ring Profiles
Take a look at the ring profiles for silent, vibrate and ring and adjust the volume levels. You might have to reference your old device to see how you had it set up before. Then, download and set your ringtones for contacts and default notification noises.
8. Set up Security/Accessibility
Browse through the security and privacy settings on your new device and make sure they’re set how you want. This includes location access, password visibility and other important settings.
9. Configure Other Phone-Specific Settings
Chances are your new device has some things your own one did not! Take a minute and click through the menus on that bad boy to see what cool new things you can do. If you have any custom keyboards or things like that, this is a good time to set that up as well.
10. Restart New Phone & Wipe Old Device
Once you’re sure you’ve transferred everything and signed in to all of your accounts, you’ve probably got a dozen applications running on your new phone. Restart it so it doesn’t drain the battery.
While that’s happening, take one last look through your old device and make sure that you have everything you need. Then once you’re sure, do a factory wipe and reset on the old device. Now it should be ready to sell, give away or recycle and you have a customized new phone!
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