Google will soon let you set up your new Android phone even faster

November 30, 2020 Luisa Rey

Setting up your new Android device is no longer as big a job as it used to be. Still, Google has discovered a way to make this happen even faster in the future. Important apps for you are given priority when setting up your new smartphone.

Set up your new Android faster

When you switch from your old Android to your new Android device now, it goes quite smoothly and quickly. You make a backup on your old device, which is stored in your Google account, and restore it to your new device. This includes installed apps, as well as your conversation history, saved WiFi networks, text messages and, for example, your background. Installing the applications can take a lot of time, especially if you had a lot of apps on your old device. We know that here like no other with the many review devices that we switch between.

Google is now working on a nice improvement to speed up this setup process. For this, a discovery has been made in the code of the Android Open Source Project called ‘installation hints’. It is a feature that gives priority to apps that are important to the user when installing. This means that if you use WhatsApp a lot, for example, this application will be installed first when setting up your new smartphone.

This has the advantage that you as a user can immediately get started setting up (and using) the apps that are most important to you. Applications that you use less often will not be installed until later. It is not a major innovation, but a nice improvement that can certainly come in handy for those who regularly switch phones. It’s unclear when Google will roll out the new installation hints. Perhaps this is already happening with Android 12, but nothing is known about that yet.