Manzana Y WhatsApp have activated a new feature to transfer your messaging app chats from an Android device to a new iPhone. It is part of an update to the tool Move to iOS.
This tool allows you to move a large amount of data from Android to iPhone: contacts, message history, camera photos and videos, internet bookmarks, email accounts, calendars, various screen settings, among others. As iOS is updated, Apple has added more capabilities, including this one, which imports chats and their contents to the new device.
This new feature is part of a joint effort between Apple and WhatsApp, which seeks to solve one of the biggest headaches for people who want to leave Android and migrate to iPhone: losing all their chats.
Historically, the backup of WhatsApp chats, photos and videos on Android was done in Google Drive. While on iPhone it is done in iCloud, causing a problem when moving from one device to another. This new feature attempts to alleviate that hurdle.
Apple has also made it clear that you will not have access to the contents of chats, photos or videos during the migration process. In fact, the data transfer —as is the case with the rest of the process— is done with a direct connection between devices. This, in theory, increases the transfer speed, by not having to go through the WhatsApp cloud and depending on the internet connection.
Transfer your WhatsApp chats from Android to iPhone: currently in beta version
At the moment this new function is in beta version. Not from Apple’s side, which is already enabled in the migration tool known as Move to iOS. WhatsApp has activated it for people who have access to the betas of the app, and little by little it will be activated for all users.
It is also important to clarify that, at the moment, it is only available for normal WhatsApp. The migration of chats, photos and videos from Android to iOS not available for WhatsApp Business.
Likewise, the possibility of migrating chats from Android to iOS with this new feature can only be done when setting up a new iPhone, when the migration assistant is activated. Perhaps in the future the possibility of doing it in other ways will be enabled.