Hi all,
I moved from my old iPhone to a new iPhone 11. I use an Apple Watch, and I use - a lot - Apple Pay so wanted to make sure I had no trouble with either. So that is why I am sharing this info - in case this is different for you too or if you find it useful or helpful.
I have had most of the iPhone’s - not any of the Plus - and so I have worked out how to do this pretty good - at least until the Watch came along, and I have always used iTunes. I always use iTunes since it does an encrypted backup which gets everything.
There is a new way to do this, and supposedly it works good, but I know my way works so I am going to stick with it for now.
But here is what you should do:
- Apply any and all of the updates for your old iPhone.
- On your old phone unpair your watch. Yes, do that. It will do a backup.
- Now connect your old phone to iTunes and do an encrypted backup - make note of the password as you will need it later. The encrypted part of the backup is important as it makes sure all data is in the backup. For example Health, passwords, and Apple Pay info are not part of an unencrypted back and I think there is other stuff missed.
- Now log out of the App Store, iCloud, and Messages.
- Once done power off your phone and remove the SIM.
- Now add the SIM to the new phone,
- Power it on and go through the simple config. When it says how to configure the phone select Restore from Mac or PC.
- Connect the new phone to iTunes.
- Now restore the phone using the backup you just did. It is nice you can see the time of the backup. This may take 10 - 15 minutes.
- You will / may need to do some small things like Touch / Face ID, credit cards in Apple Pay, and iCloud although some may be done already.
- The phone will run a little hot, but that is OK as it is working very hard right now.
- After the phone is restored you need to do a iTunes Sync with it.
- In a recent iTunes update you don’t sync apps any longer. But rather update / install only via the cloud or the App store. I didn’t complain about that, but, for moving to a new phone that sucks. Will take longer since you cannot sync apps locally from your iTunes but rather all has to download.
- Again, the phone will run a little hot, but again that is OK. It is restoring apps and rebuilding indexes.
- Your phone should be working after a total of about 2.5 hours. YMMV due to the number of apps you have but I have a fair number and all are downloaded via Wifi.
- You can reset your old phone if you are going to give it to someone.
What might be the bad news so far? It turns out TripIt, and Evernote don’t preserve their passwords through this so you will need to log in again. As well I had to log in again on some of the Microsoft apps but that is due to my employer. But the vast majority of apps are good and you don’t need to do anything and they work - for example here is a partial list of my apps - Tweetbot, Mail, Calendar, Ring, Piper, Canary, Slack, iPassword, Gaia. Quick and easy and nothing lost.
Also, don’t forget you will need to connect to your car or GPS again since you have a new phone (depending on your car, you may want to delete the old phone before adding the new phone.
Now we deal with the watch.
- Using the Watch app go into pair mode,
- Point your phone at the watch,
- And when prompted pick the backup that was made when you unpaired.
- It will take a bit to get all the apps back to your watch but keep your phone and watch nearby and it will complete.
I suggest you use your phone until the battery dies. It will die quicker than normal due to everything that is going on with it (such as all the new indexing). Once it is dead do a full charge and you should be good.
What about my old phone? It is going to sit - powered off - in one of my desk drawers for a bit until I find a better home for it.
Links
- How to use Night mode - here
- Swipe keyboard info - here
- How to use iPhone 11 camera - here
- Take Control of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 books - here
- iOS 13: Everything you need to know - here
- Very long article on iPhone 11 / Pro cameras - here,
- Very good iPhone 11 Pro camera review - by a real photogher - here
Updates
- 9/21/19 - added some useful links.
- 9/21/19 - been playing with my new phone, and really like it. Very fast in operations and a brighter screen I think. I have not found any bugs which I hear is very common in iOS 13. But not for me. But will be good to get 13.1 next week just in case.
- 9/20/19 - article released.
Michael
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