Today we have thousands of smartphones available; some of these share many characteristics, many are placed in the low range under € 200, while others even go beyond € 1000. However, the ecosystems that monopolize the market are only two: Android and iPhone.

It may happen that driven by curiosity you want to switch from one operating system to another; this involves some small attentions to be paid, such as importing all the data that you have on the Android smartphone to carry on the iPhone.

In particular, today I’ll explain how to transfer contacts from Android to iPhone, through procedures that apply to any brand (Huawei, Samsung, Xiaomi, etc…).

Transfer Android contacts to iPhone via SIM

This is probably the oldest method, but it still works today; it involves moving all contacts to the SIM (if not already done), and then inserting the same card into the iPhone and importing them accordingly.

Here’s how (the steps and settings items may differ from phone to phone due to Android fragmentation):

• On your Android devices, such as Xiaomi or OnePlus, go to the Contacts app (or the Address Book).
• Go to the Settings menu (often reachable after pressing the three dots at the top right), and go to the Import / Export item (or similar items).
• At that point, you will find an entry similar to “Export to SIM”, which will allow you to synchronize contacts with your card.
• Now all that remains is to remove the SIM, insert it into the iPhone and import the contacts by going to Settings> Contacts and selecting the Import SIM contacts option.

Watch Out for Duplication of Contacts

The drawback of using this system is that if this operation has already been performed in the past, or for some reason you have saved the contacts on the SIM, after these steps you may find some duplicate contacts in the address book.

Remember that if you are upgrading to a recent iPhone model, your SIM must be of the nano-SIM type. Alternatively, after importing the contacts, you can cut the SIM into nano-SIM.

Transfer contacts from Android to iPhone via Google account

The second method is perhaps the most convenient one since if your old smartphone is an Android type, your contacts are already synchronized with your Gmail address; at that point, all that remains is to import the email address itself on the iPhone and that’s it.

• We open the Settings on the iPhone and go to the Password and account item.
• Select the Add account option, if the Google address has not already been added; then click on the Google icon and enter the credentials of our account.

Once the account has been added, click on the relevant item and verify that the Contacts option is active; in this way, the synchronization between the iPhone and the accounts related to the Google address will take place.
This operation will easily allow you to transfer contacts from Samsung to iPhone, or from Huawei to iPhone, and so on for other manufacturers.

Transfer Android contacts to iPhone via Switch to iOS

Switch to iOS is an app designed by Apple to simplify the passage of data from Android to iOS, both in terms of multimedia elements and in terms of contacts.

Here’s how to transfer phone numbers to iPhone. I’ll explain how to do it by simultaneously operating with the two smartphones.

Launch the initial setup on iPhone and, on the Apps & Data screen, choose the “Move Data from Android” option.
Then open the Switch to iOS App from your Android device, and accept all the permissions that will be shown to you in the following screens.

Click on “Continue” on the iPhone, after which you will be shown a numeric code (usually between 6 and 10 digits); write the code on your old Android smartphone and select the data to import (including contacts).

With Switch to iOS, in addition to copying contacts to the Address Book, you can also transfer other data:

• SMS message history;
• Browser Bookmarks;
• Mail account;
• Free applications;
• Photo and video;
• Calendar including recurring events and birthdays.
• The photos and videos were taken with your old Android device, if already properly configured in the past, you will still find them directly on the Google Photos Cloud.

Once the contacts and other data have been switched, remember to set up Google Photos again to make an unlimited and free backup of photos on iPhone, thus saving on the purchase of iCloud space and freeing up space on the iPhone.