updated
Jun 2, 2025
24MB
file size
2.8K
downloads
Samsung Smart Switch Mobile is a powerful tool designed to effortlessly transfer your contacts, photos, music, videos, messages, and more from your old device to your new Samsung smartphone or tablet.
Smart Switch is how you get everything off your old phone and onto a new Galaxy.
Contacts, photos, videos, messages, call logs, alarms, wallpapers and your installed apps move across in one pass, over Wi-Fi or a cable.
Before you download anything, though, there is one thing worth checking.
Your New Galaxy Already Has It
Every recent Samsung Galaxy ships with Smart Switch built into the system. You do not need to install it there.
Look under Settings, then Accounts and backup, then Bring data from old device. It also appears on its own during the initial setup of a brand new phone, including a QR code option to pair the two handsets quickly.
If you cannot find it, search for "Smart Switch" in the Settings search box, or look in the Samsung folder on your apps screen.
So Who Actually Needs The APK
The old phone, not the new one. That is the short answer.
Smart Switch has to be running on both handsets for an Android to Android transfer, and it is obviously not preinstalled on a Motorola, Xiaomi, Pixel or OnePlus. Samsung's own instruction is to download it onto the old device.
The APK specifically matters when the old phone has no Google Play Store, which is the situation on newer Huawei handsets. Installing the file directly is the only route there.
It is also the answer if you removed or disabled Smart Switch on a Galaxy at some point, or if the phone is old enough to predate it being preloaded.
One limit worth knowing before you start: non-Samsung phones can only send. Receiving is a Galaxy-only capability, so this does not work as a general phone-to-phone transfer tool between two other brands.
The Three Ways To Move The Data
Wireless is the simplest. Both phones need Smart Switch open and have to stay within about four inches of each other for the whole transfer, and Samsung suggests plugging both into chargers.
A cable is the sturdier option, and Samsung recommends it when you are moving a large or mixed set of data. You may need a USB OTG adapter depending on what connectors the two phones have, and both devices should be at least 20 percent charged.
The third route is external storage. Back up to a microSD card or USB drive on the old phone, move it across, and restore on the new one. Useful when the two phones are never in the same room.
Whichever you pick, check free space on the receiving phone first. Samsung names insufficient storage as the most common reason a transfer fails, and the app will tell you the estimated total size before it starts.
What Comes Across, And What Does Not
The list of what transfers is long and mostly unsurprising. The gaps are the part worth reading, because you find them after the old phone is already wiped.
- App data and home screen layout are Galaxy to Galaxy only. Coming from any other brand, your apps get reinstalled but their contents, logins and settings do not follow.
- Game saves never transfer. Samsung is blunt about it: Smart Switch will reinstall the game app but cannot transfer the game data.
- DRM-protected music and video are excluded on every route, from every source.
- Third-party messenger history such as WhatsApp or WeChat may not come across. Use each app's own backup instead.
- Account-synced data does not transfer, but it reappears by itself once you sign in to the account on the new phone.
- Ringtones, message tones, vibration patterns, reminders and contact groups are on Samsung's excluded list.
Nothing is deleted from either device in the process. Smart Switch copies rather than moves, so the old phone keeps everything until you wipe it yourself.
Duplicate contacts get merged. If two entries share a name and number they will arrive as a single contact.
Move These By Hand Before You Wipe Anything
A few things sit outside Smart Switch entirely, and they are the ones people notice too late.
Two-factor authenticator codes. Users consistently report that apps like Google Authenticator do not survive the move. Use the app's own export or transfer feature while you still have both phones working, or you will be locked out of accounts.
Your eSIM. This is a separate process on the new phone, under the option to transfer a SIM from another phone, and on unsupported carriers you have to call them.
Samsung Health data. Samsung's documented method is the Health app's own Samsung Cloud backup and restore, not Smart Switch.
Keep the old phone switched on and charged until you have confirmed all of this landed. There is no reason to rush the wipe.
Coming From An iPhone
You do not need to install anything on the iPhone for the two usual routes. A cable transfer or an iCloud restore both work with just the Galaxy side.
The cable route brings more with it. Messages and music come across over a cable but not from iCloud, because music is not stored in an iCloud backup at all.
Two settings will quietly break the transfer if you leave them alone. Turn off iPhone photo storage optimisation and let the full-size originals download first, or the compressed versions will not transfer. And Apple's two-step verification blocks the iCloud sign-in route.
Deregister iMessage before you switch as well, or texts sent from iPhones will keep disappearing into it.
Secure Folder Works Differently Now
This changed recently and most pages have not caught up.
Backing up Secure Folder to a computer has been discontinued. Direct phone-to-phone transfer through Smart Switch still works, and Secure Folder is on Samsung's list of transferable content.
On Android 16 with One UI 8 or higher, restoring Secure Folder from an old backup is gone entirely, which makes a direct Smart Switch transfer the only supported route. You will be asked to unlock the old phone during the process.
Why The Permission List Looks Alarming
Installing this app asks for contacts, messages, call logs, calendar, camera, storage, photos, location and nearby devices. That is a lot, and it is worth understanding rather than just tapping through.
The data permissions are simply the data it copies. It cannot transfer your messages without permission to read them.
Location and nearby devices are the ones that look wrong but are not. Android requires both for Wi-Fi Direct, the direct phone-to-phone connection Smart Switch uses, so they are there for the wireless transfer rather than for tracking you.
Samsung does collect app activity, performance data and device identifiers, and states that it does not share them with third parties. Once the move is done, there is nothing stopping you uninstalling the app from the old phone.
When A Transfer Stalls
Storage on the receiving phone is the first thing to check, every time. Samsung lists it as the leading cause of failure.
For wireless transfers, an unstable Wi-Fi connection, the phones drifting apart, or background apps interrupting the process are the usual culprits. Keeping both screens on and the handsets side by side solves most of it.
Samsung's own fix for a transfer that will not start is to clear the Smart Switch app's cache and data on both phones, then try again.
If some apps simply refuse to reinstall on the new phone, that is often because the app has been discontinued rather than a fault in the transfer. Install those manually from the Play Store or Galaxy Store.
One genuinely odd requirement worth knowing: Samsung notes that the lock screen needs to have been enabled on the previous device for at least 24 hours for account authentication to work.
The App Also Pulls In A Small Helper
You may notice a second Samsung component called Smart Switch Agent appear during a transfer.
It is a small installer that the process brings in by itself, published by Samsung, and it needs Android 10 or higher. You do not need to seek it out or install it manually.
This Is Not The PC Version
There is a separate Samsung Smart Switch program for computers, and the two are easy to confuse because they share a name and nothing else. Different app, different version numbering, different job.
Use the computer version when you want a full backup of the phone stored somewhere safe, when the old phone is an iPhone whose backup already lives in iTunes, or when the new phone lacks the space to receive everything at once. That is covered on the Samsung Smart Switch for Windows page.
If your old handset predates the Galaxy Note 3, neither version of Smart Switch will see it. Those devices need the long-discontinued Samsung Kies, and that page explains what is still possible with them.
Once Everything Has Landed
For sending the occasional file between phones after the migration is finished, MX Share does it directly with no computer involved, which is lighter than running a full transfer again.
Your media may need better apps than the ones that came with the phone. MX Player, VLC for Android, mpv and BSPlayer all play formats the stock video app refuses.
On the music side, AIMP for Android, foobar2000 Mobile and GOM Audio handle the library you just moved across, including lossless files.
If the new phone is where you now edit things, CapCut and InShot cover video, Hypic handles photos, and XRecorder records the screen.
For everything else, the Android app section has the rest, and mobile device tools covers the desktop side.
Smart Switch is the easiest part of changing phones, as long as you know what it will not bring with it. Move your authenticator codes, your eSIM and your Health data by hand first, keep the old phone charged until you have checked everything arrived, and only then wipe it.
