New phone and chat history on WhatsApp

[WPCentral Question]

Hello,

I have been using WhatsApp on a Lumia 520 phone with WP 8 for months, and today I got a new one (same model), installed WhatsApp on it and logged in. Old chats didn't show up, and for some reason I clicked make backup. After that, I went back to my old phone and logged on WhatsApp again on it (had to wait 30 min to get a new SMS as it had to be re-activated on the old one), and now when I run it on the old phone it asks me if I want to restore chat history from a backup that has been found. I don't know if I should tell it to restore or not in order to get my chat history back; does it mean it has detected the new phone's backup and wants to restore from there, therefore with no messages, or as it has been re-activated it detected the old chat history from the old phone (is it stored locally?) and wants to restore that one?

 

[AV2RY]

You cannot move chat history from one device to another. The one it detects on your old phone is the one you backed up on That phone.

 

[zabava12]

So history is not stored on some sort of online servers, it is only local? I really need that chat history so I cannot make any mistake.

 

[AV2RY]

It local. I don't know if 520 has SD card. If it does you can save your history on it, then restore it on new phone. For now that's the ONLY option

 

[zabava12]

Right, so phones don't share backups not even if I have the same phone number on the new one (the one I used WhatsApp with on the old one - therefore same "acc"), right?

 

[zabava12]

Right, restored it and got all my messags back! Thank you a lot! Do you know how can I save those messages? I am not going to use that old phone anymore, I will move to the new one; is it safe to use WhatsApp on the new one so my old messages stay stored on the old one? Or will they delete at a point (even if I literally abandon the phone)?

 

[AV2RY]

It might stay, or it might be gone. I don't know. I read somewhere that WA stores backup for 30 days only( Don't know how it gets deleted if its sorted on local memory - OR that statement doesn't apply to WP, but Android and iOS). As I said you always have option to save it on SD card (even 128mb should be enough for txt and some media files) it will cost you few dollars only. Save it there insert in new phone. And you should be fine (I think. I don't have SD slot on 928)