For years, the real reason people didn't leave the iPhone had little to do with loving iOS. It was the moving costs. Your passwords lived in Apple's keychain, your chats lived in iMessage, your phone number lived on an eSIM your carrier controlled. Google just went after all three at once.
This week the company confirmed that its upgraded Android Switch tool — the one it previewed at the Android Show: I/O Edition back in the spring — is finally on actual phones. Samsung's brand-new Galaxy Z Fold8, Z Fold8 Ultra, and Z Flip8 ship with it out of the box, and it's rolling out now to the Pixel 8, Pixel 9, and Pixel 10 series on Android 17.
The list is the story
Migration tools have always promised the easy stuff — photos, contacts, calendars. Fine. Nobody ever stayed on iPhone over a calendar.
The new list is different. Google says Android Switch can now wirelessly carry over your Google Account, passwords and passkeys, app data, Wi-Fi credentials, alarms, device settings, home screen layout, iMessage history, Voice Memos, eSIMs, and WhatsApp chat history.
Read that again: passkeys, eSIMs, iMessage history. Passkeys were shaping up to be the next great lock-in, tied to your device ecosystem in a way passwords never were. Moving an eSIM used to mean a support call, or a QR code that worked on the third try. And iMessage history didn't move at all — switch platforms and years of conversations stayed behind with the blue bubbles.
Why it's launching on Samsung phones
Here's the interesting part: Google didn't debut this on its own hardware. The tool arrived with Samsung's new foldables, announced this week, and Google's blog post about it was pegged directly to Galaxy Unpacked, with a pitch aimed squarely at iPhone owners.
The logic isn't hard to follow. Apple still doesn't sell a folding phone, which makes the Z Fold8 the industry's best bait for curious iPhone users. Samsung supplies the temptation; Google removes the excuse.
Check your device before you celebrate
Not everyone's invited yet. The Pixel 8 and newer get the tool. The Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 don't — and Google hasn't really explained why. The likely answer is that handing off passkeys and eSIMs takes deep system-level plumbing on both phones, the kind older hardware can't always offer. Google says more Android devices will get the tool in the coming months, without naming names, so owners of other brands are waiting on a list that doesn't exist yet.
The bigger picture
Google and Apple actually started cooperating on easier switching earlier this year, which sounds odd until you remember that regulators on several continents have been demanding real interoperability from the big platforms. Data portability is the unglamorous core of that fight, and a tool that moves your logins and your phone number without asking your carrier's permission is what portability looks like when it ships.
What's left to prove is reliability. Does iMessage history import cleanly at scale? Do passkeys for third-party apps make the trip, or just Google's own? The first wave of Fold8 buyers will answer those questions over the next few weeks, and their experience will decide whether this becomes the default way people switch or another tool with an asterisk.
Still, the headline holds. Leaving the iPhone used to cost you your chat history, your logins, and an afternoon on hold with your carrier. As of this week, it mostly just costs you a phone.
Image: mktomasik, via Pexels
