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So when I plug in my new iphone, after backing up my old one it'll ask me to restore

to the backup? everything will transfer?
 
iCloud is the way to go.

On your iPhone 4: Settings > iCloud. Use your Apple ID/iCloud account to log in. Flick the Contacts switch, and your contacts should save onto iCloud.

Do the same thing on the 5 and voilà - you should have your contacts.
 
some crazy responses. Just back the phone up to icloud and restore from backup on the new phone. When you are going through the set up process it ask you if you want to set the phone up as new or restore from a backup. You do not nee itunes at all or anything hooked up.
 
I always setup my phone as new and sync everything from iCloud/iTunes. If you have iCloud setup on the 4 then contacts and emails and notes should already be on the new phone. Then just sync with itunes to get your pictures and music on the new phone. It seems like restoring a new phone from a backup causes more problems than its worth. I have seen quite a few people have battery issues when doing that. I also just like starting fresh. Keeping all your text on your phone just waste space and keeping pictures in your camera roll can slow down your camera. I got to a point where I had 1000 pictures in my camera roll and it would take over a minute to save a video after recording it.
 
one question about this: i'm concerned of restoring my iphone 5 using my backup in icloud, but i'm afraid of copying "trash", meaning some unnecessary stuff coming from the iphone 4 (apart from my contacts) that could make my new phone work slower than if i did a full restore.

what do you think?

thank you.
 
I would usually do a backup and restore, but this time when I got my 5, I set it up as a new phone. Perfect time to do some house cleaning on apps.
 
iCloud does no good if you have over 5GB of stuff on your phone unless you want to pay for additional space. I always back up to my computer, just don't trust the cloud! I have iTunes Match so my music is stored in the cloud but all my other date are just backed up to my laptop.

The question I have is setting up as a new phone vs. restoring from my last backup. I have read that it's best to set up as new and then sync, is that what most of you do? When I went from 3GS to 4 I just restored from backup but I've had this 4 for a lot longer and have a lot more data on it than I ever had on my 3GS. Which option is better?
 
iCloud is not available for iPhone 4. To transfer contacts from iPhone 4 to iPhone 5, you can go to Apple store or use third party software to transfer contacts by yourself.
 
iCloud is not available for iPhone 4. To transfer contacts from iPhone 4 to iPhone 5, you can go to Apple store or use third party software to transfer contacts by yourself.

Or just do a local backup and restore...not sure why everyone wants to make this more complicated than it needs to be.
 
iTunes can back up everything except for data that came from a computer.

That means apps not authorized on your iTunes, music from a computer and pictures not taken on the device (stored in the camera roll) are not backed up. Assuming you don't need to recover that information, just back up the devices and archive the iTunes backup folders so you can re-load those backups on another comparable device from a PC or a Mac.
 
As a few people have said above, restoring from iCloud is far and away the simplest way of doing things. No mucking about with cables or computers is required.

I did exactly this with a broken iPad a few months ago (the fact that it's an iPad rather than an iPhone is neither here nor there).

When Apple gave me a new iPad to take home, I fired it up, put in my Apple Id, and asked it to restore from iCloud. It took a few hours to complete, but when it was done my new iPad was more or less a clone of the previous one before it broke.
 
You need to use iTunes as the go between or you can download the songs again using the same Apple ID if the feature is available in your country.

This shows where iTunes in the cloud and iTunes Match are available - in which countries the downloading of past purchases in available.
 
I turned on iCloud on both my IPad 3 and iPhone 4 went into settings and turned on contactsbin both and they automatically synced
 
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We can always use iTunes or iCloud to transfer contents from our old iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a newly purchased iOS device.
Go through this article on Apple's Support which shows you how to transfer from iphone 4 to iphone 5 step by step: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2109
 
iCloud is not available for iPhone 4.

I have iCloud on my iPhone 4.

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one question about this: i'm concerned of restoring my iphone 5 using my backup in icloud, but i'm afraid of copying "trash", meaning some unnecessary stuff coming from the iphone 4 (apart from my contacts) that could make my new phone work slower than if i did a full restore.

what do you think?

thank you.

You can decide what you want to sync with iCloud on the iPhone 4, then turn it off, power on the iPhone 5 and set it up as a new phone.

As you go through the new phone set up, it will prompt you back up to iCloud sometime during the set up process. Once you go through that, your contacts and whatever else you chose to sync on your iPhone 4 will be transferred over to your iPhone 5.

Since you are setting up the iPhone 5 as a new phone, you will need to download any Apps, music, video from iTunes/App store.
 
I believe in backing up to not only my computer but also to the cloud. Restoring your new iPhone from your computer takes only a few minutes while it takes much longer using the cloud. Both work but I like the safety of doing both:cool:
 
iCloud is not available for iPhone 4. To transfer contacts from iPhone 4 to iPhone 5, you can go to Apple store or use third party software to transfer contacts by yourself.

Surely you're trolling, right? iCloud is available on ALL iOS devices that support iOS 5 and above. Its not a hardware thing!
 
Not really, but let me use a free www search engine to find out.


TransPod


iTunes is an application, just like iMovie or Safari or Firefox or Pixelmator. They all are software. Mac OS X, or OS X, is software too.
 
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