It’s been a while since people routinely hung onto their phone handsets for years, and some like me still do. But others change their handsets quite frequently, at least every year or two on modern tariffs. This means much accumulated data which you can’t be without needs to be transferred. It’s relatively easy if you stay in your chosen ecosystem, like Google or Apple, but what if you jump ship, going between systems? What you need is a cross-platform copying and duplication app. This review takes a look at PhoneTrans to see how well it will transfer data.
This is a sponsored article and was made possible by iMobie. The actual contents and opinions are the sole views of the author who maintains editorial independence even when a post is sponsored.
Perfect Copies
PhoneTrans is a lightweight app which uses a computer to copy all kinds of useful data between phones, whether Apple or Google. With the app, you can copy small bits of data or large chunks, or even the whole thing. Not only does it support 20,000 different handsets, but it can convert 32 different data types to help you go from Android to iOS and vice versa.
The PhoneTrans app supports phone-to-phone quick data transfer, phone cloning and phone merging. It supports restoring data from iTunes/iCloud and Google accounts. You can back up either part or your entire phone and can transfer What’s App, Line and Viber apps and data between phones, as well as app transfer between iPhones. The software advertises being able to one-click clone a phone between Android to Android and iOS to iOS.
One Touch Copies
Unlike typical data transfer software, which can be cluttered with many nonessential gadgets, this app boils it all down to essentials: copy stuff from one phone to another.
In many use cases, you only want to move some items of personal data, like a contact list, from an old Android phone and slide it into your spanky new iPhone 12. Or having bought the iPhone 12, you want to take everything off your old Android phone and funnel it into an iOS handset, including numbers, names, calendar entries, chats, photos etc.
Up till now that has been a laborious process, involving several what I’d call “interchange processes” – exporting files to a computer and then copying those files (presumably after some conversion or organization) to the target phone. Even then there might be some configuration and internal routing once you get the files transferred.
On iOS this task has often fallen to iTunes, which can be a bit of a pain anyway as it is so huge, and of course it won’t help you if the phone you want to merge stuff to is an Android. All that changes when you use an app like PhoneTrans to transfer the data.
It’s obvious how to use it just by looking at the interface, which explains every step right there on the screen. The text on the menu changes depending on which big button you select on each tab section. It’s easy, but just to talk you through, take for example the Phone-to-Phone section. Click on “Quick Transfer”, then read the text underneath, which gives you instructions.
Click “Get Started” and you’ll be prompted to connect the old and new phones. Once you get the two phones connected with USB, you hit the big Transfer button in between the two phones.
You are then asked what you would like to transfer between the devices. You can choose from Contacts, Calendars, Voice Memos, Photos, Music, Videos, Ringtones, Podcasts, Books, Audiobooks and Safari Bookmarks. You can choose these items of data individually or combinations of the two. Note that on the screen remarks, you can’t back up Messages and Call History. In order to pull off that trick, you must do a full backup and selectively restore those items.
Having chosen your required items, you simply hit the big Transfer button, and the process proceeds.
PhoneTrans is a great tool, but there are limits to the kinds of data you can transfer cross platform. You can’t 1:1 clone a complete iPhone and plop it whole into an Android handset. There are certain types of data that are inherently transferable, like contacts and photos for example, and some which are not. Obviously, you can’t transfer apps from one platform to another.
Of its type, PhoneTrans is a pleasant, quick and easy way to interchange data from one device to another. It’s unfussy, easy to understand and guides you through every process you want to initiate.
Perfect Clones
PhoneTrans uses a subscription model, but like all the best software, there is a buyout option. At the time of writing, the prices are as follows: $29.99 monthly for two devices and one computer, an annual subscription of $35.99 for five devices and one computer, and a one-time buyout price of $45.99 for five devices and one computer. Those prices are time limited, but the developer has appealing discounts regularly, so check the website for current offers.
Phil South has been writing about tech subjects for over 30 years. Starting out with Your Sinclair magazine in the 80s, and then MacUser and Computer Shopper. He’s designed user interfaces for groundbreaking music software, been the technical editor on film making and visual effects books for Elsevier, and helped create the MTE YouTube Channel. He lives and works in South Wales, UK.
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