Hi folks, not sure if ‘clean setup’ is the right expression, but anyway… I’ve been sporting an iPhone X for 6 years and tomorrow I get my new iPhone 15 Pro. I was thinking of setting it up clean in the sense of manually adding my apps, email data etc, and not doing a simple transfer from the old iPhone.
Maybe it doesn’t make sense to do it, maybe it does. I thought it could make sure there isn’t any residual crap from the old phone, but to be honest I don’t have any data to 100% assert that. Have any of you started with a phone replacement this way, or do you consider it pointless? If you have done it, any tips?
All opinions welcome, thanks!
You are overthinking it. Switching to a new iPhone is something I’ve done half a dozen times and the best route is to make sure your old phone is backed up to iCloud, then restore the backup on the new phone. Note that this backup is not a file system image. It is pretty clean. If you were moving to a new Windows computer and you wanted to start fresh — heck yes. But for an iPhone, which will redownload all your apps from the App Store anyway, it’s not necessary. Restoring from iCloud backup is a huge timesaver and there is, in my experience, no benefit to not using it. Enjoy your new iPhone!
Yeah, that’s fair enough what you are saying. Although my icloud package is tinyyyyy haha. Thanks!
I think if you bought via Apple it’ll recognise your new purchase and give you a month of free iCloud data enough to do a full backup and restore, for this purpose
Ah. I didn’t know that, thanks!
Backup to a laptop if you need to.
You’re welcome!
Yeah I do that. There’s no like, lag difference, the crap I get rid of is apps I don’t use and have forgotten about.
I don’t install any app until I need it, with this restart. That way any app that gets on my new phone is there for a reason.
Once in a while I do this to my current phone, too. Works great, I’ve done it like a dozen times.
you know you can set your iphone automatically uninstall apps you don’t use regularly, right?
Offloading them isn’t the same. It’s about the screen clutter, not the storage space, and offloading an app leaves the icon. Offloading does its job pretty seamlessly, but that’s a negative when I want to feel like I’ve had a clean start.
This is usually what I do as well.
Great, thanks! Nice to see I wasn’t the only one thinking of doing this.
I do exactly the same as you. I love a fresh DFU reset.
I always use the iPhone to iPhone auto transfer. I also don’t have a bloated phone or unused apps. I want everything from phone A going to phone B.
I do this whenever I get a new iPhone. Backup the old phones and include all the apps to be safe. I set up my new phone as new and start using it and download apps when I need it. So I go from 150+ apps to only the default ones so it eliminates any app I barely used on my old phone. I carry my old phone with me for a few days just in case I need to access some app immediately but if you have unlimited data you wouldn’t need to do that.
You can have some apps and settings on iCloud which will get carried over - like Health, Fitness, Passwords etc.
They are some settings which don’t get carried over, like the mail app defaults to Archive on swipe and I need to change to Trash. You’ll anyway figure it out if you are used to one setting. If it’s not usable you can always install the backup. So far I don’t mind starting fresh.
That’s great info thanks. Do you have the sim running on both phones while your making sure it runs ok?
Nope. The old one will just work on WiFi or hotspot if I’m away from home. But in my experience, I only needed my old phone at home to look up some message or a photo which doesn’t need WiFi. After a couple of weeks I just turned my old phone off.
I did that with mine. Just make sure you keep your iPhone X for a bit while setting up the new one for apps that require validation like 2 factor authentication. The big ones for me were Google Authenticator, Steam app, and my bank.
Thanks. Yeah, biggest ones for sure will be Authy app, banking and Whatsapp for me.
Make sure WhatsApp backup is turned on. That’s one thing I always make sure is done as you’ll not be able to login to your old phone to get the chats
Authy should be easy since you just need your backup password.
If I didn’t get a new phone every year I would likely not load a backup. It takes a bit more time when you just “sign in to icloud” and then go from there, but the phone feels a lot more “new”. Loading my old backup on a new phone just has too much familiarity in the way of app arrangement and whatnot.
As with any new phone, ensure all of your core apps work before resetting the old one. Often 2FA and stuff can get you in a catch 22 if you are not careful.
Bit of an aside, but my wife needed a new phone and couldn’t wait until now, so she got an iPhone 14 Pro. She had backed up her old phone to iCloud and it was updated to the latest version of iOS 16. Setting up the new iPhone from iCloud was an absolutely hellish experience. For whatever reason, the new phone would refuse to install the newest point release of iOS 16, so whenever it would try to restore from iCloud backup it couldn’t because the backup was created with a newer iOS version. I had to wipe the new phone and restart the restore process 4 times before it finally completed the iOS update and could restore the backup. And one of those times it started to install the software update but just froze after about an hour. Even after it restored from backup, it took another hour for everything (texts, photos, emails) to sync over. I’ve never before experienced this with an iPhone.
Damn! Sometimes patience is necessary for these things
The answers here are making me wonder if I should do the same - what are the downsides? Having to look up every single username and password for example?
Username and passwords should be stored with your Apple ID, right? At least I think so.
It will be stored on iCloud. You need to make sure iCloud setting is turned on.
With a lot of apps you really can’t do this, as far as I know. The app data isn’t something the user can simply copy and move.
With computers I always do things manually, but my phones have been getting migrated automatically since 2008. I don’t see any other way, unless you’re willing to lose data.
