WhatsApp chat transfer between iOS and Android finally arrives, but there’s a catch | 91mobiles.com

WhatsApp is finally allowing chat transfer from iOS to Android and this includes all voice notes, photos, videos and conversations. The much-awaited feature was announced during the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2021 event last night. However, there’s a catch. The feature will initially only allow transfers from iOS to the latest Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 and Galaxy Z Flip3 and it will be available to other Samsung phones in the coming weeks. Eventually, the WhatsApp chat transfer feature will enable transfers between iOS and Android phones but a timeline hasn’t been revealed at the moment.

Though there were some third-party methods to transfer chats between iOS and Android, there was no official help from WhatsApp. WhatsApp for iOS backs up chats on the iCloud, while WhatsApp for Android stores them in Google Drive, making transfers between the two platforms impossible.

How will WhatsApp chat transfer feature work?

The new chat transfer feature, which WhatsApp will enable in the coming weeks, will use physical Lighting to USB Type-C cable instead of transferring wirelessly. However, if you’ve transferred between iOS and Android in the past and have two separate cloud backups, the new transfer feature won’t merge them together into a single chat history. WhatsApp will overwrite any existing backups if users migrate the chat history and then back it up.

WhatsApp will allow transfers from iOS to Samsung’s new foldable phones initially and then it will allow transfer to Samsung devices running Android 10 and above in the coming weeks. The company hasn’t mentioned when the feature might arrive on non-Samsung Android phones but since WhatsApp has started talking about chat transfers between iOS and Android, we can expect it to be available anytime this year.