Ryan Haines / Android Authority
TL;DR
- The Google Pixel 9 adds an option to copy data from your old phone at any time.
- Previous Pixel phones only let you transfer data from your old phone during initial setup.
- Many devices from other brands already offer a similar feature, so this change is mostly Google playing catch up.
Setting up a new Android phone can take quite a bit of time, so if you’re in a hurry, you might be tempted to speed through the setup wizard so you can use your new phone. Depending on the device, if you decline to transfer your data from your old phone during the initial setup process, you lose the opportunity to do so at a later time. That’s been the case for Google’s Pixel phones for the longest time, but fortunately, that’s no longer true with the new Google Pixel 9 series.
It’s quite easy to back up your Android phone thanks to the backup service that’s available on every Android device with Google apps. The Google backup service lets you backup your device’s contacts, call history, settings, apps and their data, SMS messages, and MMS messages. This data is automatically backed up over Wi-Fi when your device has been idle and charging for two hours, so you don’t need to worry about keeping it up to date yourself.
When you’re setting up a new Pixel device, you can either restore it from a Google backup in the cloud or move your data from an existing device. The former is helpful for when you don’t have your previous phone anymore, while the latter is helpful for when you do as it’s much faster and allows for more data to be brought over.
If you don’t pick one of these options while you’re going through the initial setup process, they unfortunately can’t be accessed after setup has been completed. The only way to access the Google data restoration page again after completing setup is to perform a factory reset. Thankfully with the launch of the new Pixel 9, Google has finally added a way to copy your data over from your old phone after setup.
At last week’s Made by Google launch event, we spotted a new top-level entry in the Settings app on the Pixel 9 called “Back up or copy data.” Under this option, we spotted a new “copy data” page that lets you “bring data from another device.” Here, you can choose to “copy photos, contacts, messages, and more” from your previous device. The best part is that in doing so, “you won’t lose recent data” as “the data you copy is merged with the data on” your new device. Plus, if you’ve already changed some settings on your Pixel 9, those changes won’t be overwritten while copying your old device’s data.
Since we only briefly had access to the Pixel 9 series at last week’s event, we weren’t able to actually test this new post-setup data transfer feature, but we don’t see why it wouldn’t work as described. Several brands already offer a similar feature to restore data after setup, such as Smart Switch in Samsung’s One UI software, so Google adding it to the Pixel 9 is long overdue. Still, it’s nice to see Google finally include such a feature on its own devices, as it’ll make setting them up even easier for more users. Hopefully, they extend this option to devices from other brands in the future.