Final yr, stories started circulating that Google was growing a “Swap to Android” app for iOS customers trying to make the leap from iPhone to a smartphone working Google’s Android OS. Now that app has arrived. On Monday, Google quietly launched the Swap to Android app on the App Retailer in numerous international markets, together with the U.S. As anticipated, the app guarantees to make the transition between cellular platforms simpler to handle by serving to customers import their contacts, calendar, photographs, and movies to their new Android cellphone.
The app additionally instructs customers methods to flip off Apple’s iMessage to be able to get textual content messages on their new system and has them join with iCloud emigrate their picture and video library to Android.
Picture Credit: Google
Google’s Swap to Android web site has not but been up to date to point the brand new app is out there and the corporate hasn’t formally introduced its launch. The app can be not showing on Google’s developer web page on the App Retailer or in App Retailer search outcomes. It may possibly solely be discovered when clicking the direct hyperlink.
At the moment, the Swap to Android web site guides customers by way of the usual course of for transferring to Android which includes customers backing up their contacts, calendar, photographs, and movies through the Google Drive iOS app earlier than altering gadgets.
The corporate’s plan to develop a standalone app for iPhone-to-Android switchers was first uncovered final yr, when the web site 9to5Google dug into the code inside Android’s official Information Restore Instrument and noticed a reference to a Google-developed Swap to Android app for iOS. The positioning simply final month famous the app appeared to have gained the flexibility mechanically migrate a customers’ photographs and movies from iCloud to Google Pictures, additionally based mostly on mentions in one other Android app’s code.
There have been different hints that Google has been working to make it simpler for customers to shift their media content material to its personal platform and providers by way of backend developments. Just lately, Google introduced an replace to the Google Pictures app that provided a means for cellular system house owners to repeat over photographs from rival cloud storage providers, together with iCloud, Fb and others. Earlier than, transfers needed to originate from Fb or iCloud, not from Google’s app itself.
Sadly, one factor Google’s new Swap to Android iOS app doesn’t assist with is migrating a customers’ purposes. That is possible as a result of limitations as to what third-party apps can entry on the consumer’s system. Apps aren’t purported to scan the consumer’s iPhone to extract an inventory of all the opposite apps a consumer has put in, that’s.
In its App Retailer description, the brand new app promotes its capacity to deal with transferring customers’ content material between gadgets with out using “fussy cables,” which means the 2 telephones don’t should be bodily linked collectively to finish the method, as an added perk.
Google’s app is arriving a few years after Apple’s app that helped change Android customers to iPhone. Again in September 2015, Apple launched its Transfer to iOS app for Android customers which, notably, was its first app on Google Play (apart from these from its acquisition Beats.). Equally, its app helped emigrate customers’ knowledge together with their Digicam Roll, Messages, Google Account, Contacts, and Bookmarks.
Google has not but responded to requests for remark. However the app is publicly out there from the URL right here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id1581816143.
