All Samsung Galaxy phones are nothing but smartphones with Android operating system, although deeply modified by the manufacturer to be different from the others. Samsung in fact applies many changes to the standard Android menus and adds its pre-installed apps, which if on the one hand they add many functions on the other they confuse users coming from other operators, making it difficult even very simple operations such as transferring files, photos and contacts from mobile to PC.
We find out in this guide how to transfer any type of data from the Samsung mobile phone to the PC that would be done with any other Android smartphone, with some apps and programs optimized for Samsung smartphones.
READ ALSO -> Transfer contacts if you change your phone or SIM (with Android and iPhone)
To download files, photos, videos and the address book of a Samsung Galaxy mobile phone to PC we will have to connect the smartphone to the PC using the USB cable, that is the one used to recharge the phone.
Some procedures allow you to transfer data via home wireless network or via cloud services, so you don't have to use any cables.
1) Smart Switch, the official Samsung program
As mentioned above, Samsung also provides its own PC and Mac program designed to pass files and data from phone to PC and vice versa.
With Smart Switch you can synchronize photos and other files between your Samsung Galaxy computer and mobile phone, thus making a backup of all the data on our smartphone.
This program (simple to install and configure) allows you to copy any data saved on the phone including contacts, messages, WiFi settings, alarms, history and more.
From Smart Switch it is also possible to update the Samsung Galaxy to the latest firmware version and install the drivers to recognize it.
To use it, just install it on your PC and start it: if there are Samsung devices connected via USB cable, the program will automatically connect providing all the options to transfer data safely and effectively.
Smaert Switch is also useful for moving data from an old Samsung to a new Samsung, via WiFi Direct: therefore having all the original data on the new phone (without even going through the PC) is really a walk!
2) Unofficial apps to transfer files and data
To access the internal memory or microSD of the Samsung mobile phone from the PC, we can either connect it via USB and make it recognized as external memory or use an app such as WiFi FTP Server, available for free download from here -> WiFi FTP Server .
By opening the app and selecting the memory to share, just press the Start button to start an FTP server from the phone, easily accessible from Windows or Mac by opening the network resources and adding the IP address of the Samsung phone, as indicated by the app itself.
To add a network resource, please refer to our guide -> How to connect to an FTP server from a PC.
Another very useful app to access all the data on the Samsung smartphone via WiFi is AirDroid, available for free download from here -> AirDroid .
Once installed, simply open the Airdroid web page from your PC, and scan the QR code on the side with the smartphone app.
After scanning, the phone will be connected to the web page and we will be able to access all its data, so that it can be downloaded to the computer (photos, images, videos, contacts, messages, apps etc.).
Another app very similar to AirDroid but optimized to use the home WiFi network is AirMore, available for download from here -> AirMore .
Installed on the Samsung mobile phone, we can use it by opening the dedicated Web page and scanning the QR code with the app or, alternatively, using the Radar function to find smartphones with the AirMore app started.
Once connected, we can quickly transfer music, photos, videos, images, contacts and anything else using the functions offered by the Web page, which will download the data to the PC memory.
In addition to these programs for data transfer, we can also use unofficial backup programs, such as those present in our guide Best Backup Apps for Android.
3) Transfer photos, images and videos
Another alternative to transfer files and photos from Samsung mobile phone to PC is the use of a cloud service, i.e. a service in which to upload the data we want and then download it to the PC or other devices.
Among the Cloud services that we can use certainly stand out Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive which are the three most reliable, as well as offering a quick and fast folder synchronization service.
For photos and videos, the definitive and ideal backup solution for transferring images from mobile phone to PC and vice versa is the one offered by Google Photos, which allows you to save an unlimited number of high quality photos in its cloud, with the possibility of review them from a PC with the Google Drive client or from any web browser.
To transfer large files, we recommend reading the advice in the Sites guide to send large files as attachments via Email from 2 to 30 GB.
4) Transfer contacts and SMS
Contacts can be synced online to your Google Account .
We can use the dedicated Contacts app for this purpose, downloadable from here -> Contacts .
Using this app we will be able to see all the contacts already synchronized with the Google account and, if necessary, add those to the synchronization those present in the memory or in the Samsung account.
For SMS we can instead use the Messages app, always signed by Google, available for download from here -> Messages .
We will thus be able to have the messages synchronized with the PC, so as to reply or check them without even opening the phone.
In another guide we saw how to recover contacts on Samsung phones even after a phone change.
