It may not be a good idea to be following in Motorola’s footsteps, after the announcement earlier this week. But in terms of launching your own apps in the Play Store, it’s a good thing. Sony has just launched their Xperia Transfer Mobile app into the Play Store. You can think of this as Sony’s version of Motorola Migrate, or Apple’s iCloud. It will make it simpler for you to transfer your data from your old phone to your new one. It does support both Android and iOS, which is nice, however, you can only transfer to an Xperia phone. So you can’t use the app to transfer data from a Moto X to a Nexus 5.
So what does the app support moving over? Well it’ll move over your contacts, calendar, SMS, MMS, Bookmarks, Notes, Photos, Music, Videos and apps. But surprisingly, the apps is listed as “iPhone only”. You’d think it would be easier to move them over on Android only as it is the same OS, thus the same apps. Sony does note that data synced with cloud services like Google will not be transferred. So if your contacts and calendar are synced with Google, like mine are, they will not be moved over. But on the bright side, they’d already be there because you need to sign into Google to use your new Xperia Z1, or whatever new Xperia smartphone you’ve just picked up.
If you’re moving from an older Android device to an Xperia device, you can use NFC to start the transfer process. However it’s only compatible with Android 4.0 – Ice Cream Sandwich and above. On the iPhone side, it needs iOS 4.0 or above. On the newer, Xperia devices, it needs to have Android 4.3 or later. So it’ll work with the Xperia Z1 and Z1s, but not too many others.
It’s great to see this app hit the Play Store, hopefully we’ll see more apps from Sony hit the Play Store pretty soon. It’s a great way to update your services without needing an OTA.
Source: Android Police