Data transfer from S6 to S21

Venger · Feb 5, 2021

Hi,

I received my S21 today and I'm going to be transferring all my data across from an S6 - trouble is the charging socket on the S6 has long stopped working so I cannot connect the phones directly via cable.

I'm happy to use Smart Switch wirelessly, altho apparently it could take 6hrs+ but I'm wondering, would it be quicker to back the S6 up to Google or Samsung cloud (I've never done this before so it would be a full backup, don't know how long that would take) and then download or restore to the S21 ?

There's approx. 60GB of data to transfer.

Many thanks for your time.

ocnbrze · Feb 5, 2021

6hours? 60g worth of data? is this photos or videos? are they not on a sd card? when i went from the note 8 to my note 10+, it took minutes to do....of course i did not have 60g worth of data to port over.

i think smart switch would be the easiest and quickest way. with 60g worth of stuff, it could take just as long with either cloud service.

Venger · Feb 5, 2021

Photos, videos, music...the S6 didn't have an expandable memory, so no SD card.

tbh I'm tempted to agree with you, think it's gonna take an age either way.

ocnbrze · Feb 5, 2021

i would also look into using google photos as well. let is sync all of your photos and videos to the cloud. when you get your new phone, you just sign in to google and your photos will be there. no transfer or even have to use smart switch.

svim · Feb 5, 2021

Use Samsung's Smart Switch when you're going to transfer a user account from an old Samsung device to a newer one. In your case, yeah it'll take a while but look at this a functionality over convenience matter. You want to essentially clone your device and transfer it, and while Smart Switch isn't a fully capable cloning utility it comes close to being one, the issue being there's difference in the base file system structure of those two different phones running different versions of Android. You can't just do a one-to-one transfer, the data on your old phone needs to be copied over into the proper, corresponding directories in your new phone. Doing it manually will be a challenge while just letting Smart Switch do it for you will be a lot less of a hassle. You'll probably have to do some miscellaneous tweaks to various settings in the Settings menu (there are new features in your S21 that didn't even exist yet in your S6), along with some app's Settings, and some data/files 'might' need to be manually moved (use the included file manager app) so hang on to your S6 until you're sure your S21 is all set up the way you want.

Venger · Feb 6, 2021

@svim many thanks for the detailed reply - Smart Switch it is then.

Venger · Feb 6, 2021

Well, it's just completed and the actual transfer took 1hr 16mins with a further 10mins for the S21 to 'organise'.

That's obviously way quicker than I was expecting which is good...now I'm thinking did it get everything lol :thinking:

ocnbrze · Feb 6, 2021

Venger said:
Well, it's just completed and the actual transfer took 1hr 16mins with a further 10mins for the S21 to 'organise'.

That's obviously way quicker than I was expecting which is good...now I'm thinking did it get everything lol

keep us posted....i'm glad it was quicker then 6hours......lol

NightAngel79 · Feb 9, 2021

Venger said:
Well, it's just completed and the actual transfer took 1hr 16mins with a further 10mins for the S21 to 'organise'.

That's obviously way quicker than I was expecting which is good...now I'm thinking did it get everything lol

I definitely prefer smart switch. Home screen layouts, wallpapers, plus I really like it transferring my call logs and texts, which I never got Google to do right from a regular backup. Glad it worked!

Venger · Feb 9, 2021

I have to say I was very impressed with Smart Switch everything appears to have copied fine, even lock and home screen background photos! The biggest pain was trying to remember all those passwords to apps you haven't had to manually log into for years, got there in the end though

olbriar · Feb 9, 2021

Smart Switch is the greatest thing since sliced bread!

Glad it served you well. It has never let me down.

maxwellian · Dec 31, 2021

svim said:
Use Samsung's Smart Switch when you're going to transfer a user account from an old Samsung device to a newer one. In your case, yeah it'll take a while but look at this a functionality over convenience matter. You want to essentially clone your device and transfer it, and while Smart Switch isn't a fully capable cloning utility it comes close to being one, the issue being there's difference in the base file system structure of those two different phones running different versions of Android. You can't just do a one-to-one transfer, the data on your old phone needs to be copied over into the proper, corresponding directories in your new phone. Doing it manually will be a challenge while just letting Smart Switch do it for you will be a lot less of a hassle. You'll probably have to do some miscellaneous tweaks to various settings in the Settings menu (there are new features in your S21 that didn't even exist yet in your S6), along with some app's Settings, and some data/files 'might' need to be manually moved (use the included file manager app) so hang on to your S6 until you're sure your S21 is all set up the way you want.

Do I install Smart Switch on my s6 or on my new s21 or both?

ocnbrze · Dec 31, 2021

maxwellian said:
Do I install Smart Switch on my s6 or on my new s21 or both?

both. on the s6, you need it to backup your data. and on the s21, you will need it to transfer that data over.

https://www.samsung.com/us/apps/smart-switch/

Data transfer from S6 to S21

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