The trials and tribulations of the new phone

As Jean-Luc Picard would say, "Captain's log, supplemental".

As I wrote yesterday¹, my major problem with the new phone was transferring all the messages from WhatsApp. Theoretically it is possible to do this via WhatsApp, but as I wrote, when I tried this, the old phone got to 100%, the transfer crashed and the new phone was bereft of data. Copying the whatsapp directory from the old phone to the computer and thence to the new phone did not solve anything.

Eventually ... the information on this page helped. First, I verified that I did have a backup in Google Drive, the backup that I made yesterday morning. Then I uninstalled WhatsApp after which I  reinstalled it; after skipping the screens that would have allowed me to transfer data from my old phone, I eventually reached a screen that asked whether I wanted to restore a backup. Naturally I said yes, and this time the restore succeeded. There were something like 51,000 messages stored, but retrieving them was fast.

One thing that I have learnt: I frequently send mp3 files to my wife via WhatsApp; after sending them, I delete the message on my phone. What I did not know is that the file is still stored in the phone's memory, in a directory called media\whatsapp documents\sent. There were plenty of files in this directory that I deleted, fortunately before having created the backup.

Copying the ringtones via the computer worked properly, so this morning I woke to my normal morning tune instead of the one that the phone chose. I also went through contact groups and assigned them their distinctive ringtones. At least something worked easily.

The fact that the last picture in the DCIM directory was from 26 January ... is because the last picture that I took with the phone was from that date. Now the gallery has refilled with pictures that were sent by WhatsApp, but because of my manipulations, I have two if not three copies of some pictures. I suppose that I'll have to clear that up at some stage.

Internal links
[1] 1904

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
334	17/02/2011	More Blodwyn Pig	Blodwyn Pig
550	17/02/2013	Pictures from a balcony (2)	Personal
675	17/02/2014	DBA: On to the next stage	DBA
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New mobile phone - Galaxy S25+

My current mobile phone is a Galaxy A9 that I received¹ on 30 May 2019; that's nearly six years ago. I was satisfied with my phone, primarily because I don't do much with it apart from using it as a telephone and as a camera. At work, we are about to embark upon the use of Priority Mobile, initially for something small but I have no doubt that once word gets out that we have this capability, there will be requests for more uses. The minimum configuration requires Android 11 - and of course, the version of Android on my phone is 10, and the A9 cannot support more modern versions.

So I had to ask for a new phone, and to my surprise, there were no problems in its authorisation, or in receiving it. Once I had the phone turned on, an application started that offered to copy all the data from my old phone to the new one. Of course, I accepted, and after about ten minutes all the photos, songs and apps had been copied over. The only problematic app is WhatsApp: I backed up all the data to my Google cloud account, and I'll restore it onto the new phone when I get the SIM transferred.

Gripe: the phone comes with a type C to type C cable; obviously one plug fits into the phone, but I don't have (at the moment) a charger with a type C socket. Fortunately I was able to use the power cable of the Kobo that will have to suffice until Temu deliver a new charger, along with a type C headset and some replacement cases.

Since having written the above, I made a quick journey to Bet Shemesh, to one of the mobile phone shops. They transferred the SIM from the old to the new phone and sold me a case - a snip at only 80 NIS 😏. As noted in the previous paragraph, I ordered two replacement cases, each costing about 18 NIS - quite a difference.

It transpires that one doesn't need to back up WhatsApp data to the cloud: the app can do a phone to phone transfer; well, that's the theory. In practice, it didn't seem to work. The transfer started ok, but at some stage the connection was dropped, and since then I haven't managed to get any data transferred. The old phone can't find the new phone. It then occurred to me that maybe a reset would help. So I turned both phones off and then on again. The transfer started and even got to 100% on the old phone and about 98% on the new phone, but then the new phone said that there had been a problem and the transfer would have to be restarted. The old phone thinks (excuse the anthropomophism) that the transfer succeeded and cannot be persuaded to restart. No chats have been transferred and only pictures until 26 January are on the new phone (the pictures are not the fault of WhatsApp).

So I decided to take a computer-centric option: at the moment, I'm copying the entire android\media\com.whatsapp\whatsapp directory to my computer's hard drive and then I'll copy that directory to the new phone. I'll probably do the same with the DCIM directory, at least from 26 January. My private ringtones also have not been copied.

Enough moaning.

Internal links
[1] 1228

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This day in history:

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64	16/02/2007	Working hard (but seeing the light at the end of the tunnel)	Programming, ERP, Cooking, Soundclick
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1008	16/02/2017	Reviewing someone else's academic work	ERP
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1585	16/02/2023	Transferring another interview	DBA, Mobile phone
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