Smart Switch, Samsung’s official data transfer app, is primarily designed to transfer data between Samsung devices. It’s not directly compatible or optimized to transfer just WhatsApp data. However, there’s a hidden workaround with which you can use Smart Switch to transfer all WhatsApp data (photos, videos, files attached, chat history, etc.) from an iPhone to a Samsung phone. And the best part, your Samsung smartphone won’t be reset. We tried it on our iPhone 15 and Galaxy Fold 6 and it worked like a charm.
Let’s begin.
Transfer WhatsApp Data From iPhone to Samsung – No Reset
Now, on with the steps that are simple enough except for one twist in the middle. We also found a pre-requisite but the hard way during the transfer process.
Prerequisites
- Place both phones on a wireless charger before beginning the transfer process because this will take time and consume a lot of battery.
- When we started, we were at 70%, and by the time the transfer was complete (took 1.5 hours), our phone was about to die (less than 4%). If you don’t have two wireless chargers (understandable), charge both phones to 100% before you begin.
- You will also need a cable to connect both phones to each other.
- Base iPhone models like iPhone 15 and even the iPhone 16 come with USB 2.0. So it might take a lot of time to transfer data. In our case, it took 1.5 hours to transfer 9 GB of WhatsApp data.
Steps:
- Download the Samsung Smart Switch app on your Samsung phone.
- Connect iPhone and Samsung with a cable – use an OTG adapter if you have an iPhone with a lightning port.
- Open Smart Switch app on Samsung phone and select Receive data to transfer WhatsApp data from iPhone.
- Select iPhone/iPad on the next screen.
- Tap on All to unselect everything and then select just Apps. That’s where WhatsApp will be. Now scroll down and tap on Transfer button at the bottom.
- Next, unselect everything, select only WhatsApp, and then tap on Install.
- Now WhatsApp will begin the transfer process. You should see a QR code. Don’t scan it.
- On iPhone, go to WhatsApp > Settings > Chats and tap Move chats to Android. You should see the transferring screen and then the organizing screen. This process may take time based on data size (ours took 30 minutes).
- You will see ‘data transfer complete’ screen. Select WhatsApp and tap on Next at the bottom.
- Ignore the iMessage notice, tap Next button at the bottom, and then tap Done.
Now open WhatsApp on your Samsung Galaxy phone, select language, enter phone number, verify number with call or message, and importantly, give all necessary permissions to sync contacts, messages, etc. Once done, you will see the ‘importing chat history’ screen. Finally, you will see the ‘Import complete’ screen.
WhatsApp should now display your profile picture but you have to enter your name and create a passkey. And we are done. Enter the pin to access your WhatsApp account as you would normally do.
Note: The reason WhatsApp takes so much time to import data from iPhone to Android is how data is stored in the cloud. iPhone uses iCloud while Android uses Drive to store WhatsApp account data and these two don’t get along. So Smart Switch must download data from iCloud on iPhone, transfer it to Android, and upload it to Drive which takes time. Since we had over 9GB of data, it took
WhatsApp will import chat history, profile photos, media, and files. Everything except your call logs (both audio and video) won’t be imported.
And that’s it, folks. All your WhatsApp account data should have transferred from iPhone to Samsung Galaxy except call logs. If we find a way to import that too, we will update this page pronto. Till then, here are some hidden WhatsApp features Meta doesn’t want you to know!
