Getting New iPhone: Restore from Backup or Phone-to-Phone Transfer?

I'd say phone to phone as it's I think, faster however with that being said I've done both and both work as advertised. It's all on what you wanna do and how quickly you want your stuff. I think though that if you still do phone to phone your apps would still have to download in the background. Correct me if I'm wrong as it's been a bit

On the blind group email, I suggest new if you are having issues with VO on 14 pro. New is good, done both in the past. 16 pro max, did new and works well just the notification issues with VO but you might not have that issue. Long live cats.

If I recall correctly, transferring between phones keeps all your Keychain data, meaning that you are still able to use all your saved passwords and in some cases also authentication tokens on the new phone. Backing up to a computer via Finder on macOS or iTunes on Windows will also keep all your authentication credentials if you choose to encrypt the backups, but iCloud backups don't keep that information at least without turning Advanced Data Protection on, which I've never actually done myself so can't be sure.

I try to keep a good backup, but I've had no trouble using phone to phone, except when I bought the 17 pro a while back. It failed three times in a row, and I sent it back. I bought a different, much cheaper se3 and it copied just fine. Maybe the universe was trying to tell me something.

I have had good success with phone to phone transfers. My first iPhone was an eight. I successfully transferred everything from my eight to my iPhone SE third generation. And then when it was time for me to get a new phone again, I successfully transfer everything from my iPhone SE to my regular iPhone 15. I haven’t had any issues doing it that way. Although I have taken mine to the Apple Store and had them do it for me so that may also change, depending on which method you used to do it. But I’ve had good luck with that. Hope you enjoy your new phone.

I’ve done it both ways and highly prefer bringing the phones together and let them transfer.

I did a device-to-device transfer from an iPhone 14 Pro Max to an iPhone 16 Pro Max for a family member over the holidays, and it went well. Importantly, I didn't hear anything about missing content or them needing to sign into their apps all over again, which was my biggest worry.

There were a few things I had to sign back into, but most things, like my Wi-Fi network were transferred. If I remember correctly, the bluetooth devices had to be connected to the new phone. I put a copy of the Led Zeppelin IV album on my phone a long time back from Windows and a CD. The phone to phone put it on the new one back in... 23. Just saved me some trouble. Went fine, took time.

I have an iPhone 13 Pro Max and am contemplating upgrading this year, even though it is probably the worst time in history to do so thanks to rammigeddon.

I had an iPhone 12 I used briefly for work (with my own account) and I think I did phone to phone when I switched to my 13. If I remember right, then I lost some data like local game saves. I don't think I had set up things like banking apps at the time, but I would guess that would get lost along the way.

So with phone to phone, is it just basically setting up all the apps I had before (but I don't think it necessarily installs them), and connecting to iCloud/keychain etc. But I will lose all data I'm not already backing up to the cloud, and will need to sign into everything again. Is that right, or does it do more than that?

But I think if I backup and restore then it will keep pretty much everything won't it? So wouldn't this be a better option?

The other thing - I have a load of bluetooth devices connected to my phone like my Orbit Reader, Habel, Logitech keyboard, Meta glasses, Air Pods, watch etc. I am guessing Apple stuff should transfer over without too much fuss, but should I be explicitly going into bluetooth settings and forgetting all my bluetooth devices before I try to move them over? I presume I am going to have to set them all up again from scratch?

I suspect I'm overthinking this. And maybe when I see the price of the iPhone 18 range I might decide not to bother, but I'm curious about how this works.

I've never had any problem with the phone-to-phone route. It's worked well whenever I've upgraded.

Check amazon for deals or with your phone company? Maybe the 17 pro or pro max. I am sure both might bring deals that will be better than apple.

Yes I will definitely check out Amazon, thanks. I'm not so convinced by phone companies - whenever I've looked in the past it just means I have a crazy high monthly bill and end up spending a lot more on the phone than I would do in the long term. I don't have high monthly usage limits so tend to find buying the phone outright is less expensive even if it is a bit painful in the short term.

Verizon does so, if you use them check in Sept or Nov with them. I recall got $300 discount and that help. You never know if unless you ask. Whatever you choose, would like to know what you end up doing. Take care.

If their service goes down hill you are locked in for usually 36 months. you are better off buying out right. Most stores have finance options like Affirm.

Device to device works great, recommend it for sure.

Everyone seems to be saying go phone to phone - so is there any advantage of doing the backup/restore method at all?

Can anyone answer my specific questions around wwhat happens to local saved data (ie not in cloud) and bluetooth devices if you do a device to device transfer?

Recently upgraded and did the phone to phone thing. My wife did the same with no issue. Me, all worked fine except for receiving and sending calls which as a phone is important lol. It didn't work and I spent ages turning off airplane mode etc and other things google told me to do. Eventually it worked but decided a backup download may have been less hassle.

That’s interesting. Sorry you had that issue. I’ve never seen that and I’ve transferred all of my phone information from one phone to the other and I’m on my third iPhone now. I don’t know maybe it was something with your configurations or something. I’m glad you got the issue resolved now. That’s weird though. Hopefully it doesn’t happen again for you. I’ve never bothered doing a restore backup thing. First of all because I don’t have a computer in my house it’s like involved cause it just seems like such a pain in such a hassle. Good luck whatever you guys end up doing. I hope it works out for everybody either my friend that you. Will you guys choose? Hope it works out. Whatever method you guys choose hope it works out.

If you have a eSIM, that could’ve been the cause, especially if the eSIM does not allow transferred. But it’s just a guess, I have no idea as this has worked fine for me in the passed... minus the reactivation of the sim on my new device as sims in my country cant be transfered not yet at any rate so yeah.

When using the phone to phone method, is it a good idea/required to update the old phone to the new iOS first? Or does it not make any difference?

iOS 27 isn't sounding too good from the Applevis list of bugs list.

I have now been through this and transferred from my 13 Pro Max to my 18 Pro. I kept the old phone on ios 26 and the new phone obviously comes with ios 27. When you do phone to phone you can do it over wifi or you can plug in a cable between the phones - so I plugged them in with a lightening to usb charger. I left it going, went out for an hour, came back and it was done. (In hindsight I shold probably have charged the new phone up some more - I thought 60% was going ot be enough, but when I came back it was at 19% and getting anxious - I think it had gone into low power mode).

A lot of things have transferred across pretty well. I've not tried too many apps, but most either just worked or I had to login again using the password saved in my keychain. I tried a couple of games like Connect Them and Eldrum Untold and all data seemed present and correct. I was pleasantly surprised that Easy Reader just worked and my books were there - not only that but the one I'm currently listening to had remembered where I was. Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Lire, Mona etc all worked fine. Facebook seemed to know I was switching phone and guided me through some setup thing but I didn't have to do much to get in.

In Apple Mail, my gmail accounts were there, but my fast mail was not. This one has app specific passwords so I had to go and get a new one, which was a pain when I couldn't remember how to get in. I then couldn't get into Claude until I had sorted this out.

I was too lazy to move my physical SIM only so tried to get it converted to an esim. This was incredibly easy and just worked.

WhatsApp was easy once I had done that - all my data seemed to be there. I'm sure I had to do something but it was easy enough that I've forgotten what it was.

I had to log back into my bank and credit card apps. One of them required me to use my old phone to accept. The other one wanted me to generate a QR code in the old pone and hold it up to the new one nice and steady for a while so it could have a big think about it. I couldn't do this so had to get a pair of eyes to sort it out. There was probably another way to do both things.

Apple Pay needed me to verify my cards again. The first one sent me a text, but wallet intercepted it sand just authenticated me which was nice of it. The other one I needed my cv2 and I couldn't find the card but I'm due a new one in a couple of weeks so have left it.

PiccyBot wanted me to enter my Apple ID password. This was surprisingly difficult because the keyboard seemed to be missing half the letters, so I couldn't do it. This is nothing to do with PiccyBot as I had the same thing happen trying to change the name of my phone. I went into keyboard settings, did nothing as far as I know, then tried again and it worked. So who knows what that was.

All Apple devices just worked - so I could copy/paste with my Mac, use my Air Pods, and my Watch just worked as it should straight away. It was showing live activities, allowing me to magic tap to pause/play etc.

As far as other bluetooth devices were concerned... my Meta Ray-bans and Logitech MX Keys needed to be added in again. I have a (pretty pointless) bluetooth toothbrush which just worked on the new phone without me doing anything. I didn't do anything on the old phone to forget any of them.

I still have some other things like my Hable, Orbit Reader and WeWalk which I've not tried yet.

I found the initial setup of the new phone quite difficult - there were some accessibility challenges. Face ID was pretty badly broken in particular. But the actual transfer was less traumatic than I expected. I'll probably find something I've forgotten that will trip me up later, but i was expecting to spend all weekend battling with it and that wasn't really the case.

Anyway I thought I'd put my experiences here in case anyone else is wondering what to expect.