It’s 2020 And WhatsApp Hasn’t Fixed Its Biggest Problems Yet

It’s good to hear that WhatsApp is rolling out a new storage management feature for Android and iOS devices that will supposedly make our lives easier.

And why not? Many of us have complained about WhatsApp photos and videos filling up device storage, thanks to the tons of WhatsApp groups we automatically get sucked into.

But, hopefully, all of the misery might end soon with the new storage management tools. However, there is one major problem that the Facebook-owned instant messaging service is yet to fix.

You can’t sync WhatsApp between Android and iOS (In 2020)?

We are living in a connected world where everyone deals with multiple devices running different operating systems. Here, you can’t sync WhatsApp between Android and iOS, and it’s a real bummer for many users, including me.

That was a big problem I faced when switching from Android to iPhone and had to let go of my old Whatsapp chats. Nevermind, they weren’t that important either. But you get the idea of what I am talking about.

It’s a big joke that you can interact with AI-powered voice assistants on your phone but can’t transfer your WhatsApp messages from Android to iPhone and vice-versa.

On Android, you can backup WhatsApp chats to your Google Drive and restore the data later on the same or another Android device. Same way, iPhone lets you backup WhatsApp data to your iCloud account and restore it later (on an iPhone, not even iPad).

Even after 10 years of existence, WhatsApp hasn’t been able to provide a feature that now counts among the basic ones: cross-device sync. In other words, WhatsApp is the only app that I have to specifically backup before factory resetting my phone or switching to a new device so that I don’t end up losing my chats.

In comparison, both its siblings Messenger and Instagram don’t even require you to backup any data. You just need to sign-in with your Facebook account and access all of your message history.

Why you can’t sync WhatsApp between Android and iOS?

All of this happens because of the way WhatsApp is designed. Keeping all the backup data on our cloud drives saves massive amounts of storage space that WhatsApp would have to pay for either from its pocket or by putting ads on our smartphone. Regarding the privacy aspect, be it Google or WhatsApp, the data is living on the cloud anyway So, it depends on which company you trust more.

It’s also the case that messaging app can only use iCloud on iOS to backup WhatsApp data. No matter how much money Apple takes to make Google its default search engine, it still mandates its cloud service in the name of security and privacy. On the other hand, iCloud support is very limited for Android, so bad luck there too.

Limited to a single device

Here, the fact that you can only access WhatsApp on a single device makes the situation harder for the users.

Yes, WhatsApp Web exists, but again it complements the WhatsApp app present on your Android and iOS device. Basically, WhatsApp Web pulls data from your smartphone. So, it’s useless if your phone isn’t connected to the internet.

As per reports, WhatsApp is working on a multi-login features that will allows us to use WhatsApp on up to 4 devices at the same time. However, there is no word when it will arrive and whether it will break the compatibility barrier.

Are there any workarounds for WhatsApp Backup? Sort of…

Of course, if there is a problem someone usually comes up with a solution. And in this case, one of the ways to sync WhatsApp backup is by using Dr Fone WhatsApp transfer tool that works between Android and iOS as well as two Android devices. However, keep in mind that it’s a third-party app and may raise privacy concerns among some users. Also, you’ll have to shell out some cash as well to use the app.

Another way to send your WhatsApp chats to your iPhone is by using the export chat option that creates a zip file. But again that’s a tedious process as you’ll have to do it for individual chats. Of course, that zip file can’t be used to restore chats in the WhatsApp app.

With that said all we can do is wait until the day the messaging service brings full-blown cross-device compatibility and allow us to easily transfer chats from Android to iPhone.