The gallery opens on your new phone and the first few years are visible. That alone does not show whether the entire archive moved. Cloud previews, downloaded originals, and local folders on the old phone can be stored separately. List what you want to move before starting the transfer.

Make a small source inventory

Note rough counts for the camera, downloads, and important app folders. Include videos and edited copies. Check how items that contain multiple parts, such as a motion photo, are stored. Album membership and the physical folder structure can differ.

Verify what the transfer includes

You can use a cable, a local backup, or cloud sync. Signing in to the same account does not guarantee every original is available offline. Keep the devices connected until the transfer is complete. Save any list of errors or skipped items to review afterwards.

Open examples as well as counting

Choose files from your oldest year, the past month, and an important album. Play a large video at the beginning and in the middle, zoom into a portrait, and open the correct version of an edited photo. If the counts differ, check whether each counter includes album entries or unique files.

Rehearse before resetting the old device

Open a few previously chosen items without a connection on the new phone. That helps distinguish cloud previews from local copies. Make a second backup of the important archive. If you find a missing folder, you can return to the old phone and transfer just that part while it is still available.

Compare the library view with the files behind it

A phone that shows eight thousand photos may not hold every original at full resolution. Some files could be stored in a cloud account. On the old phone, turn off its internet connection and try opening and enlarging a sample. Open the same item on the new device and compare the capture date, dimensions and duration where relevant. Include a photograph from a few years ago, a motion photo and something saved from a conversation. A migration tool might copy the standard camera albums while skipping items in an app's own folder. List camera photos, downloads, conversation attachments and editor projects as separate sources. Some albums group existing files without duplicating them. You can therefore find a photo on the new device while losing the arrangement you used to locate it. Include important albums and favourites in your checks. Look for the features you actually rely on, rather than expecting two phones to use identical labels for the same material.

Export a sample from the new phone

A thumbnail on the new phone is a starting point. Open the image at full size, then try sending a sample to a computer and opening it in an independent viewer. For a video, play a section from the beginning, middle and end. A working preview tells you little about whether the final part came across. If undoing photo edits matters to you, check how the new device handles the editing history of one sample. When you spot an omission, identify which source it came from before repeating the entire migration. Reimporting the same collection can create duplicates with different names. Mark off each small group once you have checked it. Before handing over or resetting the old phone, confirm that a copy of the important files can be opened somewhere independent of both devices. Do this ahead of the reset date to leave time to resolve an access problem. Keep the inventory until you have used the new phone long enough to notice whether a familiar folder or album is missing.