The ever-so-reliable WhatsApp insiders over at WABetainfo have discovered that the company is working on a feature to facilitate transfers of chats and media from an Android smartphone to an iPhone. The feature is currently in development and doesn’t yet have a release date. It’s also unclear how the feature would work. However, the report claims that the process would require the Move to iOS app that helps transfer contacts, media, web bookmarks, calendars, and more from Android to iOS. By the looks of it, the transfer of WhatsApp chats from Android to iOS would work like it does the other way round, i.e. iOS to Android. Meaning you will require to transfer everything locally via a cable. That’s because WhatsApp uses different cloud platforms for backups on Android and iOS. So the transfer doesn’t come about easily. You can’t simply upload your information to the cloud from your old device and download it on the new device. On Samsung devices, the feature requires the Samsung SmartSwitch app. It’s unclear which app WhatsApp would use to transfer chats to other Android devices from an iPhone. Google has a “Switch to Android” app in the works but it’s not official yet. The new report also confirms that this upcoming WhatsApp feature will work on all Android devices and won’t be limited to Samsung smartphones. The publication expects the feature to be available to beta users in the not-so-distant future.
Android to iOS transfers of WhatsApp chats is seemingly coming soon
The ability to transfer chats between Android and iOS is one of the most requested features on WhatsApp. The Facebook-owned company finally added the ability on Samsung smartphones last week. It’s now preparing to expand it to more devices. WhatsApp says you can transfer everything from your profile photo and settings to text messages, voice messages, photos, and videos. It doesn’t let you transfer your call history, display name, and peer-to-peer payment messages though. That’s for transfers from iOS to Android, of course. We don’t yet have any information about it works for Android to iOS transfers. Hopefully, we will see this feature in beta soon.
