I feel like photos, videos, and music are the easiest things to transfer. Just plug the phone into your (or any) computer, copy the photo/video/music folders,

I feel like photos, videos, and music are the easiest things to transfer. Just plug the phone into your (or any) computer, copy the photo/video/music folders, and then dump them on the new device if you don't want to use one of Google's upload/download services. Simple read access to the contents of an Android device was always one of the big "pluses" in my experience. Then if you find that too difficult for whatever reason, there are Google apps that do the same thing. The only bits that can be annoying are app settings as you mentioned. Even that has improved and I notice a lot of that stuff showing up when I sign into a new device. Still, I hope to see some improvement on that front in the future. Third party migration apps (like the one on my Moto X) can do it so Google should definitely offer something similar. It currently works for some settings/data but I'd hope they're working on adding support for more.