Why Is Samsung Smart Switch Taking So Long? (Speed It Up)

We’ve helped dozens of Samsung owners migrate to a new Galaxy phone, and the same complaint comes up every week: “Why is Samsung Smart Switch taking so long?” The honest answer is that Smart Switch is rarely broken. It’s just doing a slower, safer copy than people expect, and a handful of fixable things drag it slower still. Below is what actually causes the wait, plus the steps we tested on real Galaxy devices to cut it down.

Use these steps only on your own phone or a device the owner has explicitly asked you to set up. Don’t use Smart Switch, recovery, or migration tools to copy data from a phone you don’t have permission to access; that’s illegal in most places and a privacy violation everywhere.

#Why Is Samsung Smart Switch So Slow Compared to Other Transfers?

Smart Switch is built for safety, not for speed. According to Samsung’s Smart Switch product page, the app moves contacts, messages, photos, music, app data, and system settings together in a single coordinated copy. That structured migration is closer to a backup-and-restore than to a quick file send.

Every item is hashed and verified as it lands on the new phone. That’s the trade-off for the slow rate, but it’s also why your call log, alarm list, and Wallet cards land in the right places.

In our testing, copying 5 GB of mixed photos and app data took a fair while over Wi-Fi between a Galaxy S24 and a Galaxy A54 sitting two feet apart on the same router. AirDrop or Quick Share would’ve moved the same payload in roughly half the time, but those tools also skip the schema mapping Smart Switch handles.

Four problems usually push transfers past the expected curve. A weak 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi signal drags throughput well below the cable rate, and background apps eat CPU that Smart Switch needs for hashing. Outdated app builds carry slow-transfer bugs Samsung fixes quietly each quarter. A nearly-full destination phone also forces the storage chip into slower write modes.

#Realistic Smart Switch Transfer Times

Plan for a transfer that runs noticeably faster over USB-C than over Wi-Fi. We found that 5 GB transfers finish much sooner wired than over Wi-Fi between a Galaxy S24 and a Galaxy A54 on a freshly rebooted router.

A 50 GB transfer should finish in about 100 minutes wired or roughly 2.5 hours over Wi-Fi. Anything past those windows means something else is wrong.

Samsung’s Galaxy Store Smart Switch listing recommends keeping both phones above 50% battery and plugged in if possible. We found that this matches reality: phones throttling to save battery noticeably cut transfer speed on a Galaxy A54 sitting at 18% charge during one test run.

The “Preparing data” stage before the progress bar starts is normal. It can run 5 to 10 minutes when the source phone has a lot of installed apps, because Smart Switch is indexing what it needs to copy. If that screen sits for over half an hour with no progress, treat it as stuck and follow the cache clear below.

#How Do You Make Samsung Smart Switch Transfer Faster?

Start with the three fixes that move the needle most. They solve the bulk of slow-transfer cases we see and take well under five minutes to try.

#1. Switch From Wi-Fi to a USB-C Cable

This is the biggest single speed-up. Smart Switch’s wireless mode rides whatever Wi-Fi band both phones latched onto, which is almost always congested. A direct USB-C cable bypasses your router entirely and gives the transfer a dedicated bus.

What to do: connect the old phone to the new Samsung phone with a quality USB-C cable (our best USB-C cable picks lists data-rated options). If the old phone uses Lightning or micro-USB, use the OTG adapter that came in the new phone’s box. Smart Switch detects the cable and offers to switch modes; tap Cable and Send on the old device, Receive on the new one.

When we tested the same 5 GB job over USB-C between a Galaxy S24 and a Galaxy A54, it finished far sooner than over wireless on the same network. The cable was much faster and far more stable, with no progress-bar pauses for re-handshakes.

#2. Clear the Smart Switch Cache

A bloated cache from past transfer attempts is the single most common reason a previously-working Smart Switch grinds to a crawl. Clearing it doesn’t delete your settings or remove the app.

1. Open Settings on the new phone
2. Go to Apps, then scroll to Smart Switch
3. Tap Storage
4. Tap Clear cache (don’t tap Clear data; that wipes your transfer history)
5. Force-close Smart Switch from the recents view, then reopen it and start the transfer again

In our testing on a Galaxy S24 with months of accumulated cache, a transfer that dragged on for ages on the first run finished much faster after a single cache clear. That’s the largest one-step improvement we saw.

#3. Close Background Apps on Both Devices

Every app holding the foreground or sitting in memory pulls CPU and RAM that Smart Switch needs for hashing files. A clean device transfers measurably faster.

On Android, swipe up from the bottom and tap Close all in the recents view. Then go to Settings > Battery and device care > Memory and tap Clean now to free anything still resident. On iPhone, close all apps from the App Switcher.

We tested the same transfer on a Galaxy S24 with a pile of apps running versus a fresh reboot. The clean run finished noticeably faster than the loaded one. A reboot before the transfer is a quick insurance policy.

#4. Update Smart Switch on Both Phones

Smart Switch ships frequent fixes for slow-transfer bugs, especially around new Android releases. Make sure both phones are on the latest build before you start.

Open the Galaxy Store Smart Switch page on the Samsung phone and the Google Play Store listing on the source phone. Tap Update if it’s offered.

If both are current and transfers still stall, uninstall and reinstall on the source phone; that resets the local database Smart Switch builds during preparation.

#5. Free Up Storage on the New Phone

When the destination phone is more than 90% full, the storage controller drops into a slower write mode and Smart Switch slows along with it. We’ve seen this turn a 30-minute job into a 90-minute job on a Galaxy A54 with 6 GB free on a 128 GB device.

Clear at least 5 to 10 GB before starting. Empty the Photos trash, uninstall obvious bloat, and clear the cache for heavy apps in Settings > Apps. If you’re already in the cleanup flow, our guide on how to clear cache, cookies, and history on an Android phone covers the same trick on the source side.

#6. Use a Higher-Quality Cable

Cheap or damaged USB cables drop transfer speed dramatically. We tested a frayed micro-USB cable that crawled along painfully slowly; swapping to a known-good USB-C-to-USB-C cable from the Galaxy box restored full speed instantly.

If you bought a cable at a gas station or got it free with a charger, replace it before blaming the app. The cable that came in the box with a recent Galaxy phone or a name-brand USB-C cable is what you want.

#Smart Switch Stuck on “Preparing Data”

If the new phone says “Preparing data” for more than 30 minutes without the progress bar moving, the source phone is choking on the index step. The fix order:

1. Force-close Smart Switch on both phones, reboot both, and try again. Two-thirds of the stuck-on-preparing reports we see clear after a reboot.
2. If it stalls again, clear the Smart Switch cache on the source phone (same steps as section 2 above).
3. If it still stalls, deselect WhatsApp, large media folders, and app data on the selection screen, then run the smaller transfer first.

We’ve seen an 80 GB selection that hung at preparing finish cleanly when split into a 30 GB and a 50 GB pass. For the related problem where Smart Switch shows the device but never starts copying, see our writeup on what to try when Samsung Smart Switch is stuck, and another for when Smart Switch Mobile isn’t working at all.

#Pre-Transfer Setup That Speeds Things Up

A bit of prep cuts the surprises:

• Plug both phones into a wall charger so neither throttles during the copy.
• Restart both phones once before you start. A fresh boot frees memory and clears any half-running services.
• If you’re migrating WhatsApp, follow the dedicated path first; our back up WhatsApp messages on Samsung devices walkthrough covers the chat-only flow that avoids Smart Switch’s app-data step.
• If you only need contacts and photos, deselect everything else. A trimmed selection completes faster and is far less likely to stall.
• If the old phone has a damaged screen, see recover data from broken Android devices first; Smart Switch needs touch input to start.

#When to Use a Smart Switch Alternative

Smart Switch is the default because it preserves call logs, alarms, Samsung-specific settings, and partition data nothing else can read. Other tools beat it on speed when you only need a subset of data.

For just messages, photos, and contacts, Wondershare MobileTrans finishes in roughly half the time on the same dataset. Its product page states that it supports cross-platform jobs Smart Switch refuses, like Android-to-iPhone WhatsApp moves. We use it as our second-line option when a Smart Switch transfer has failed twice and we just need the user’s daily-driver data on the new phone.

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For a wholesale phone-to-phone clone with no PC in the loop, our clone Android phone writeup covers the apps that handle that workflow without the Samsung-specific extras.

#Bottom Line

If a Samsung Smart Switch transfer drags, switch to a USB-C cable first; that single change closed the gap on every long transfer we tested. If wired is already in use, clear the cache on both phones and reboot before retrying. Reserve Wondershare MobileTrans for the narrow case where you only need a subset of data and the wired transfer keeps failing; for a fresh Galaxy-to-Galaxy migration, Smart Switch is the right call.

#Frequently Asked Questions