I am going to be getting a new cell phone soon. I have app (games mostly) that I want to save my progress to my new phone. Last time I did this it was hit or miss depending on the app itself with a few failures. Given that this is 2025, is there one technique that transfers everything via P2P? Is there one spot in the cloud I can upload/download my phone apps and data? What’s all yall’s best recommendation?
This is going to vary by manufacturer and model. When I recently stepped up from my old Samsung Galaxy to a new one, it was as simple as introducing the two devices to each other and saying “go.” Literally everything moved over except private browser history.
Let’s assume Samsung to Motoroil
It also depends on the specific game. Some of them save to Google Play Games (Google’s games profiles system in the cloud). Some will save to their own cloud. Some will only save to a local file.
You won’t really know until you try it. It will probably work for most games just by using the standard Android transfer process: Transfer Your Data to Your New Android | Android
But you need to test every individual game afterward, on the new phone, to make sure all their stuff transferred over correctly. Some might have you log in again. Others might be missing their saves completely. Don’t delete anything on your old phone until you’ve verified the transfers succeeded.
It will be safer if you go Samsung to Samsung (they have their own backup/copy app), but it’s not necessarily a lost cause going from Samsung to Motorola. Try the standard Android procedure and hopefully your games will just work. If not, look up instructions (or contact the dev) for that specific game.
Worst case, you usually have 2 weeks or so to return the phone and get another kind instead.
Edit: In the games you’re current playing, open them up and look in their settings/options menu for any sort of sync/cloud/login thing. Many Android games don’t sync to the cloud by default but can if you enable it in the settings. Then you can just login again on the new phone and download your old saves that way. With some particular games on the new phone, you might to finish an annoying tutorial or new player experience before you can download the old saves.
Some games will do this automatically, but not all, so it’s best to check individually.
You’d probably do this in addition to the phone-to-phone transfer, since not all games have cloud sync.
Is it an iPhone? I’m always scared of losing my data when upgrading to a new phone, but for the last three iPhones I’ve had, I’ve just followed the directions and everything came through without a problem.
If you’re worried about a particular game, check to see if it has a way to sign in with something (Facebook, Apple, Google, etc.) so your progress is saved on the cloud. And if there’s a game ID (usually on the splash screen or settings page) make a note of it–usually if you have the game ID you can get your game restored if something happens to it.
I’m not sure how it works if going from an iPhone to Android or vice versa. Never tried it.
If you lubricate your new Motorola phone enough it should work
Painfully, if at all. Many games won’t copy anything over, even if you bought it again on the new platform. Only the ones that have their own cloud login and save system will be able to use your same profile (maybe). The ones that save to the phone itself or to either the Google or Apple clouds will not sync over.
I have an iPad and an Android phone and the same games on both basically exist in their own pocket dimensions that the other can’t see.
Yep, a couple of years ago I went from a Galaxy S9 to a S23, and it was as simple as you describe. There’s even a built-in app for it in Android.
That’s completely by design… on both sides. Neither company want you going away from their ecosystem, so they’ll make it as difficult as possible for you to do so.
Ideally they’d make their side easy to migrate to and hard to migrate from, but I think in practice, it’s just difficult all around to switch ecosystems.
Heck, it’s difficult to reliably send a text message between ecosystems. Apple refuses to play nice with the entire rest of the world.
For a more serious answer. If you’re upgrading Apple to Apple, they have a transfer/setup feature. Samsung to Samsung does as well. Google (Pixel) does not. It’ll bring over all of my apps but it won’t even setup the home screen shortcuts like on the last phone. Working between hardware providers I think there’s less likelihood of everything coming over. They’re both android but then are running their own skin over that which will make conversion harder.