How to transfer phonebook from Samsung to iPhone

Have you replaced your old Samsung smartphone with an iPhone but don’t know how to recover all the contacts you had in your address book? For work reasons you have to use both a Samsung phone and an iPhone, would you like to synchronize the contacts of both devices but you don’t know how to do it? If you want I can give you a hand.

You should know that there are at least two ways to transfer contacts from Samsung to iPhone : the first is to use the Internet and automatic synchronization of contacts through an account common to both devices; the second, on the other hand, involves the creation of a file containing the address book via the Samsung device, which must be imported at a later time directly on the iPhone (or iCloud).

How do you say? Does it all seem too complex for your limited computer experiences? I assure you, appearances can be deceiving: the steps to be put into practice are extremely simple and within everyone’s reach, even those who, like you, do not consider themselves exactly up to the situation. Read on and you will realize it.

Index

• How to transfer phonebook from Samsung to iPhone: Google sync
• How to transfer phonebook from Samsung to iPhone: manual import
• Other methods to transfer phonebook from Android to iPhone

How to transfer phonebook from Samsung to iPhone: Google sync

The simplest and most immediate way to transfer contacts from Samsung to iPhone is to take advantage of the synchronization of contacts through a cloud service compatible with both devices, which could be Gmail .

One of the main advantages of this approach, which is extremely simple to put into practice, is being able to keep the address book synchronized on both devices involved, as long as they are connected to the Internet and configured appropriately.

Having made this necessary clarification, let’s see how to proceed: first, unlock the Samsung smartphone or tablet and tap on the gear symbol located on the Home screen or in the drawer of the device, in order to access the Android Settings .

Now, press on the Account and backup and Manage account items , tap on the name or email of the Google account configured on the device and then on the item Synchronize account , resident on the next screen. Now, make sure that the lever next to the Phonebook item is set to ON (otherwise you do it) and, to synchronize the data immediately, press the button (⋮) at the top right and tap the Synchronize now item from the menu that appears.

If a Gmail profile is not yet configured on the Samsung device, do this: go to the Settings menu > Accounts and backup> Manage operating system accounts , tap on the Add account item located at the bottom of the screen that is proposed to you and tap the symbol of Google , resident in the next panel; now, enter the device unlock PIN / pattern to verify your identity and log into your Gmail account , if you have one, by entering your credentials in the dedicated fields.

If you do not have a profile of this type, you can create one immediately: then click on Create an account and follow the procedure that is proposed to you, to finalize the creation of the Gmail profile. Generally, all you have to do is choose an email address to use to log in, a password to protect the account and indicate some personal data such as name, date of birth and telephone number. To find out more, feel free to check out my guide on how to create a Google account .

Once you have finished configuring the Samsung device, go to the iPhone , unlock it and open the iOS Settings , by pressing the gear icon located on the Home screen or in the App Library. Now, press on the Contacts and Accounts items , tap on the Add account option and tap on the Google logo , to indicate your desire to set up a new Gmail account.

Once this is done, all you have to do is press the Continue button and enter the username and password of the Gmail account configured on the Samsung device, in the appropriate fields; if you have forgotten the password, you can recover it by following the instructions I have given you in this guide .

Once the login phase is complete, set the lever relating to the synchronization of Contacts to ON (if not already there) and press on the Save item , located at the top right, to complete the procedure. Following this operation, the Gmail address book (and therefore the Samsung device) will be synchronized with the iPhone and all the contacts that belong to you should also appear on the “iPhone by”.

If, on the other hand, you had already previously configured the Gmail account on the iPhone , make sure that synchronization is active by going to the Settings menu > Contacts> Accounts> [Gmail account name] of iOS and checking that the lever relating to Contacts is set to ON .

However, if you want to ensure that the changes made to the names on one of the two devices are also transferred to the other and vice versa, you must set the Gmail address book as default on the iPhone: to do this, go to the Settings> Contacts menu on iOS, do tap on the item Default account and then on the Gmail option .

However, it should be noted that any contacts already available on the iPhone before configuring the Google account will not be automatically imported to it; if you want to get this result, you have to make a “manual” copy of the names, following the steps I suggested in my tutorial on how to synchronize iPhone contacts with Gmail .

How to transfer phonebook from Samsung to iPhone: manual import

As an alternative to the previous solution, if you are interested in keeping the address books of the two devices separate or, again, you want to have precise control over the names to be copied, you can use the manual procedure. In practice, you need to create a VCF file from the Samsung device, which is then transferred to the iPhone and imported via the Contacts app, or uploaded to iCloud.

To proceed with the creation of the file containing the contacts, take the Samsung device, unlock it and open the Contacts app , using the resident icon on the Home screen or in the drawer of the device.

Now, tap on the button (⋮) located at the top right (on tablets, you must instead press the ☰ button, which is located at the top left) and, once you reach the main menu of the app, press on the items Manage contacts> Import or export contacts> Export . Then, indicate whether to create the file in the internal memory or on the microSD (if present) and touch the Export button , in order to create the Address Book.vcf file containing the device contacts, in the chosen location. If prompted, tap the Allow button so that the file can be archived correctly.

The next step is to self-send the file to an e-mail address accessible from the iPhone, or from the computer: then start the Samsung Archive app , tap on the ☰ button located at the top left and choose the Internal memory item or SD card from the panel that appears, based on the save path you chose a moment ago.

Finally, make a long tap on the Rubrica.vcf file , press the Share button located at the bottom and use the next panel to open the file in the email app you prefer; then proceed to send the file to an e-mail address easily accessible from your phone or computer.

Now, you have two ways to proceed: open the Address Book.vcf file from iPhone and import it via the Contacts app, or import it to iCloud via your computer; in the latter case, the Apple cloud service must have been previously enabled on the iPhone and the lever relating to Contacts , present in the Settings> [your name]> iOS iCloud menu must be set to ON . Below I’ll explain both modes of action: choose the one you prefer, based on your real needs.

• Import via iPhone: open the Mail app on the “iPhone by”, access the message you sent yourself a little while ago and tap on the vcf attachment , to automatically open it in the Contacts app . Now, if you want to import all the names in the address book, tap on the Add all [XX] contacts item located at the top of the new panel that opens; if, on the other hand, you want to add only specific names, press on each of them and then on the item Create new contact , to insert it in the iPhone address book, or Add to contact , to add contact information to an already existing name.
• Import via iCloud: Visit this website from any computer browser, log in to your Apple ID on iPhone and press the Contacts button , resident in the account management console. Now, click on the gear symbol visible at the bottom left, select the Import vCard … item from the menu that appears and select the .VCF file created previously, to import it to iCloud and, consequently, to the iPhone address book.

Regardless of the import system you choose, I would like to point out that changes made to the phonebook from iPhone (adding, deleting or editing contacts) will not be reflected on the contacts on the Samsung device and vice versa.

Other methods to transfer phonebook from Android to iPhone

If you are about to set up an iPhone from scratch and want to transfer not only the address book of the Samsung device to it , but also all the other data present on the latter (SMS, photos, videos, accounts, emails, calendars, browser favorites , history, and more), you can consider using Apple’s Switch to iOS app .

In detail, it is a system designed to simplify the complete migration of data from Android to iPhone during the first configuration of the latter. For everything to go smoothly, Wi-Fi connectivity must be active on both the Samsung device and the iPhone , but the devices do not need to be connected to the Internet.

In order to use Switch to iOS, you need to get to the App and data phase of the iPhone first setup procedure, choose to migrate data from Android and write down the numeric code that appears on the screen.

Then, download the “companion” app on the Samsung device using the Android Play Store , start it and, after granting all the necessary permissions, enter the code noted previously in the appropriate field; to finish, select the items to be transferred from those displayed on the screen and go on , to start the data passage.

If you are interested in learning more about this procedure, I invite you to read my guide to the operation of Switch to iOS , in which I have explained everything to you in great detail.