Overcoming challenges for a better phone: My frustrating upgrade experience

Although my old smartphone is still in perfect condition, I have made the decision to upgrade to a new model: from a Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite to a Samsung Galaxy A54. Despite its current functionality, I opted to make the switch now, with the hope that the trade-in value will remain higher compared to what it would likely be in a year when it will likely decrease. And the A54 was on sale.

The main reason behind this decision was the opportunity to use 5G. Recently, I switched from my personal mobile plan to a business plan, which provides me with higher speeds and multiple SIM cards. Surprisingly, the business plan is also cheaper over a 30-month period. While 5G speeds may not be necessary at the moment, especially because my provider in Germany has not yet activated 5G Standalone, having access to more bandwidth could improve data rates during events or in crowded places.

Over the past two days, I’ve been busy setting up my new device and attempting to migrate apps. Smart Switch proved to be useful, as many apps retained the exact same data as on my old phone. This meant no need for reconfiguration or signing in again.

However, some apps didn’t seem to support Android’s backup functionality. In those cases, I had to sign in again and redo all the settings. Even Google apps like YouTube Music required this extra step. Thankfully, for many apps I could easily sign in using autofill with the stored credentials from my password manager.

But what bothered me a lot were banking apps, which required scanning a QR code from a piece of paper to enable them as a second-factor authentication. I mean, it’s 2023, why isn’t there a solution to eliminate the need for paper-based methods? Why can’t Android’s backup functionality be supported across the board?

Some apps did allow activating the new device with confirmation on the old device, which was somewhat convenient. However, imagine if I had lost, broken, or had my device stolen, and I needed to make an important bank transfer. It would have been impossible until I received a new code via mail, which could take several days.

It’s definitely frustrating!

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