Best way to do a Clean Install?

Only one way to do a clean install. Backup your device and settings-reset-erase all settings.

You then go through the process of downloading and installing your apps again. You could do screenshots before hand.

You will not be able to go back to anything older than what is being offered today. 8.2 or at the most 8.1.3.

You will lose your text messages.
App purchase are tied to your apple store ID.
You will lose most of your game progress. A few backup to a server, most dont.
Contacts are tied to iCloud unless you don't sync those to iCloud.

Worst case if it all is too much, you have your backup that you can restore from and get back to where you are right now.

My last erase and build took about an hour. I know all my login's and dont care about text or game progress.

Now that you mention it I have seen that before.
Like I said though, nothing in my text messages I care to save. I love the new setting that will clean my messages as they hit 30 days old. Saves me the manual process.

Before you do that there are a few options. settings>reset>reset all settings. That is a known solution to help resolve quirky issues with battery and will keep your apps and data intact. Will have to go back through your settings and set up wifi networks and wall paper but otherwise all else remains. If that does not help, use iTunes and restore allowing it to get a backup then restore the backup during the process. Again that has a good success rate as well. Actually doing that then the reset all afterwards may be a 3rd option. All the above is known to work but worst case if none of it does then clean setup may be in order. Check usage and see what may be using battery and deal with that app. Also email accounts have been known to cause issues too so removing all email accts rebooting and adding them back is an option. (or simply settings>reset>reset network.)

I would definitely try the above IF you are interested in keeping your data. If not Apps and music will download again after a clean install if that's all you care about.

if you intend to keep iOS 5.1.1, just make sure that you do not restore your phone as a new device using iTunes. By doing that, iTunes will upgrade to the latest version of iOS.

Otherwise, make sure that you have a current backup and then restore the device from that backup. Generally, I prefer using iTunes, because it will restore all of the user data as you originally had it on the device, including text messages and photos.

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gsmornot said:

You will not be able to go back to anything older than what is being offered today. 8.2 or at the most 8.1.3.

You will lose your text messages.
App purchase are tied to your apple store ID.
You will lose most of your game progress. A few backup to a server, most dont.
Contacts are tied to iCloud unless you don't sync those to iCloud.

Worst case if it all is too much, you have your backup that you can restore from and get back to where you are right now.

My last erase and build took about an hour. I know all my login's and dont care about text or game progress.

Click to expand...

Most of this does not apply when using iTunes.

You can restore from a local backup without having to upgrade to the latest iOS version. Also, an iTunes restoration will reload the game progress, photos, contacts, and text messages in their entirety.

Restoring from iCloud is more hit and miss, which is why I generally don't rely on it for backing up my phone.

Fried Chicken said:

So I was at the apple store, and one of the techs was able to run some sort of diagnostic test on the iPhone.

Unfortunately it looks like a clean (whipe and re-install) install is the only way for me to fix my battery life issues. I've kept this iPhone from account to account, so I'm going back to iOS 5.1.1 which at the time was jailbroken.


Now that I'm thinking about doing the clean install, I'm realizing just how daunting and ****** this is going to be.

So, first off does anyone know any tools to make this easier?
Is there a way for me to restore my text messages? What about my app purchases? Contacts? Whatsapp messages?

I'm not too worried about my photos or iTunes library, that's all on the computer.

Anyway, help is appreciated.

Click to expand...

There is a free program called SyncIOS that might be helpful...

http://www.syncios.com/features.html