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Can I unpair and pair to new iPhone w/o losing Activity data?

W

wlow3

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 9, 2008
246
46
I read that if you unpair from an old iPhone and then pair your Apple Watch to a new iPhone that you lose all of your Activity data.

Can someone tell me if any data will be lost from unpairing from my iPhone 5s and pairing it to my soon-to-arrive iPhone 6s, and what steps and in what sequence will minimize this? Will encrypting my iPhone backup on iTunes save any of the Watch data?
 
Make an encrypted backup of your iPhone (check the box on the iPhone page in iTunes). Your health data will be included in this backup.
 
You will not lose Health and Activity data if you do an encrypted backup on iTunes (and probably iCloud). I have done this a few times recently to unlock my phone.

  1. Un-pair the watch from the old phone. (This forces a backup of the watch to preserve your latest data.)
  2. Plug the old phone into your computer with iTunes.
  3. Select Encrypted Backup.
  4. Backup the old phone on iTunes.
  5. Setup the new phone.
  6. Tell iTunes to restore the new phone from the backup you just created.
  7. Pair the watch to the new phone. (It will bring over the final backup from the watch from the original phone.)
 
No, you need to re-add the Apple Pay credit cards to the watch. (It keeps everything on the phone.)
 
i am going to be doing the encrypt backup. kinda of nervous though i hope everything transfers over to new iphone 6s ok :oops:
 
danmart said:
Cool, thanks.
Click to expand...
You will also need to re-sync any music playlist that you previously had and you will also get the message that motion calibration must be done again using the gps of the new device.

Those 3 things, Apple Pay, motion calibration and synced music playlists are all lost when un-paired the rest is retained when you have done an encrypted back up. But I believe now with iOS 9 and 2.0 that Apple Pay will only need to have the specific card's security code filled in. I don't think you have to contact the issuing institution separately for the watch, once it's established on the phone. That was always a major pain for me previously whenI had done an un-pair some time ago. I have to call the bank and get them to activate it. I'll still have to do it with a new phone but at least if what I read is correct I won't have to do it again for the watch.
 
papbot said:
I believe now with iOS 9 and 2.0 that Apple Pay will only need to have the specific card's security code filled in. I don't think you have to contact the issuing institution separately for the watch, once it's established on the phone.
Click to expand...
Yes, this is how it has worked. Just enter the CVC code again.

Very slick, really.
 
You do not have to connect it to iTunes and do a back up. I backed up my watch on my iPhone 6+ right before I started up my iPhone 6S. I restored from a backup on my iPhone 6S, and I got all my activity tracking from the iCloud backup without going through iTunes. Worked perfectly.
 
bmac4 said:
You do not have to connect it to iTunes and do a back up. I backed up my watch on my iPhone 6+ right before I started up my iPhone 6S. I restored from a backup on my iPhone 6S, and I got all my activity tracking from the iCloud backup without going through iTunes. Worked perfectly.
Click to expand...
True, but it is just a crapload faster with iTunes. And, if you have music not on iTunes Match, you will need to connect to iTunes anyway.
 
exxxviii said:
True, but it is just a crapload faster with iTunes. And, if you have music not on iTunes Match, you will need to connect to iTunes anyway.
Click to expand...
Yeah it's just so easy. There were a ton of people on here telling posting that it could only be done if you did the encrypted iTunes backup which was not true. Just thought I would let people know you don't have to do it that way.
 
danmart said:
Does this retain ApplePay info on the watch or phone?

Or do they need to be added again?
Click to expand...

Apple Pay information is stored only within the respective devices so they'll need to be added again. However, what's nice in iOS 9 is once you've re-added the cards to the new iPhone, the AW app will populate the cards and you can add those to the AW rather than do it from scratch.
 
Everything went smooth for me. All I had to do was enter the CV code and the card was right back. All my data, health and apps just like they were.
 
I am a little disappointed that you can't get the activity/Apple Watch data from your phone without restoring from a back up. I usually like to "Set Up As New" when I get a new phone. Looks like I can't do this without loosing almost 5 months of data.
 
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Kb522 said:
I am a little disappointed that you can't get the activity/Apple Watch data from your phone without restoring from a back up. I usually like to "Set Up As New" when I get a new phone. Looks like I can't do this without loosing almost 5 months of data.
Click to expand...

The anal-retentive practice of always setting up as new is overkill and unnecessary. The phone runs just as well when restoring from a backup and becomes a problem only if it's corrupted. My wife and I have backups going all the way back to the original iPhone on our brand new 6s.
 
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I have another problem, I didn't think ahead and do the reset before backing up my old phone, I backed it up, restored it to my new phone, then I've spent hours making various changes to the new phone, I get to the watch and then find I can't just migrate the watch data over and it needed to have been done before anything else? So now I'm going to lose months of watch data or completely wipe and start from scratch my now perfect new phone backup/restores? It should be easier than this, it's Apple.
 
megalaser said:
I have another problem, I didn't think ahead and do the reset before backing up my old phone, I backed it up, restored it to my new phone, then I've spent hours making various changes to the new phone, I get to the watch and then find I can't just migrate the watch data over and it needed to have been done before anything else? So now I'm going to lose months of watch data or completely wipe and start from scratch my now perfect new phone backup/restores? It should be easier than this, it's Apple.
Click to expand...

The watch is continually backed up to the iPhone and you won't lose months of watch data even if you forget to unpair.

You can do an erase all content and settings from within the Watch by following https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204567 then re-pair it to the new iPhone. All data up until the day you backed up should be there (with the potential exception of health/activity data which requires encrypted backup via iTunes or iCloud backup).
 
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