Phone Migration Notes

This weekend, I've finally been looking into finally transferring across to using the new phone I'd gotten a few months ago (*).

As feared, there are currently a whole bunch of "manual intervention" bottlenecks that are not syncing over and require lots of manual effort to fix. Some of which are really silly and should be rectified by various vendors, while others are historical mistakes coming back to haunt 

I'm only now kicking this off this migration with urgency now as:

1) Storage on my old phone is now really almost exhausted (i.e. it was complaining multiple times on Friday, showing 98% used)

2) Battery life is almost unworkable now (i.e. is around 8.5-ish hours in practice), AND I've gotten the "battery needs replacing" popup twice too

3) Life got in the way (see below) 

 

(*) Yes... I got a new one a few *months* ago - I'd snapped it up just before we headed off on our trip to Canada back in June (*2), as I had been worried that the battery life on my old phone wouldn't survive that trip. Well... fortunately it did (just!), albeit with a lot of careful management (i.e. aggressively shut down stuff, and frequent charging, along with carrying my charger with me everywhere). I ended up not taking the new one on that trip, as I quickly realised there was too much stuff that had changed that I really couldn't trust it being my primary so far away from home, and with little prep. (Also, I wasn't sure how Canadian Avsec would react to me carrying 2 phones + the risk of someone pilching my new one)

(*2) Jeez... my first ever trip to Canada has now been almost 2 months ago, despite having a little recap post about it sitting in my drafts folder for ages. In my defense though, life has definitely gotten in the way in the meantime (which those who've followed my Mastodon posts would know about).  (Also, it's kindof ironic that Siggraph just finished this week in the very place I'd gone... but then again, we did end up heading there back then to visit an elderly relative, who ended up having a bad fall a week to the day we left, and ended up dying a few days ago... so yeah... the timing was what it needed to be for reasons, and flying all the way back there for the 2nd time in 3 months would've been "a bit much")

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Overall Impressions of New Phone

While there are a few aspects to this new phone that do feel rather slick, in many many ways, it is quite a downgrade (hence why I've been hesistant to fully transfer stuff over)

 

Stuff I don't like at first touch:

* Moving all the buttons to the right-side of the phone only, AND moving the camera lenses to that side too - This effectively forces to me hold it a particular way when taking horizontal photos... the OPPOSITE direction to what I'm used to doing (i.e. I'm used to turning it clockwise, but now, it is optimised for single-handed operation by right-handed folks - not that I'm not right handed, but still, turning it that way just feels wrong)... I'm sure I will stuff up on this front and drop the thing at some point!

* Loss of front LED for indicating charging status  (i.e. this was a *MAJOR* thing I'd been using as my only backstop between knowing I'd been able to charge it, vs it sitting there for 3-8 hrs and now being down to 10% with only 20mins tops to recharge it before I had to dash) 

* Loss of audio jack - Yeah, I've never been keen on bluetooth wireless headphones near my head...

* Heavy promotion of "AI Everything" as a major selling point, with deep integration everywhere

Stuff I like - A much smaller list:

1) Having given it a good workout "in the field" last night, the new "Ultra Wide Angle" lens works well. Yes, that is handy, and it does off just that extra bit of reach I've been lacking across all my photo gear to date.  (I should probably get such a lens too, but then, it'd be too much of a pain for travel to carry that too)

2) A fresh battery that should last longer than the old one I've been running

Stuff I'm still trying to figure out:

* How much further can I customise the default camera app's UI?   I do need frequent access to the exposure controls, but right now it's even worse than ever when I try to get in there to adjust them, with no apparent way to rearrange them to fit

 

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Migration Bottlenecks 

The following bottlenecks are current pain points that really need to be addressed / polished up IMO

1) Firefox - Only transfers *some* stuff using their built in sync, vs the OS one. Notable issues:
   * Must create account to sync from phone to phone. Cannot like use a QR code to pair on local network, then do something like LocalSend to transfer on a one-off basis if wanted

   * Does NOT transfer the following things, which are a major pain to set up again:
      ** Add-ons / Extensions
      ** Pinned bookmarks
   * Have to re-login to everything that requires effing 2FA

 

2) 2FA - Microsoft Authenticator
   * It's very hard finding instructions on how to transfer from one device to another with this

      EDIT: Ugh... sounds like the only option is by signing in with a Personal Microsoft Account - Something I try very hard to not do on Windows machines as it is already, given their propensity to then use that to try to vacuum up everything on the machine

   * For most of the things I've historically got on there (thinking I could keep to only one of them), it may be easier to re-register them with a different token provider that will be easier to sync in future 

   * But ugh... it sounds like work IT's one may need help desk intervention, so may have to leave till the workweek to do

 

3) Various apps need manually signing in again, including a bunch that are waiting on that 2FA thing working