The WhatsApp has always had one big shortcoming (or advantage?) compared to messaging apps like Facebook Messenger or Telegram. Instead of storing your messages on the cloud, in a server, your message history is instead only saved in your smartphone's local storage. This made it tricky to get things such as multi-device support working well and also meant that uninstalling the app or installing it on a new phone required you to start with a clean slate or manually restore a previous backup.

On Android phones, the intermediary for this is Google Drive. Now, though, you can pass on a backup from one device to the other, no Google Drive required.

As announced by WhatsApp on Twitter, you can now transfer your chat history from one phone to the next directly, without the need of having to upload that backup to Google Drive. This will allow you to set up WhatsApp on a new phone without much hassle, even if you've been putting off those Google Drive backups or have them turned off. You'll be able to transfer not only messages, but also photos and videos, so you'll kick off exactly where you left off on your older phone.

The only actual requirement for this transfer to take place is that you need your new phone to run the same operating system as your previous phone. If you have an Android phone, you'll only be able to migrate to an Android phone, and if you have an iPhone, you'll only be able to transfer to a new iPhone.

If you want to transfer your chat history across the OS divide, you'll need to do it through other methods. That being said, we wouldn't be surprised if this tool begins supporting cross-OS migrations sooner than later. Right now, though, it's not a thing.

If you want to give this a shot, make sure your WhatsApp app is fully updated on both your older phone and your newer one.

It might take a few days (or weeks) for it to roll out to everyone, although WhatsApp tends to announce stuff when it's actually about to roll out or even after it has already done so. Don't be surprised if you're not seeing it yet, though.–androidpolice.com