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iPhone 7 - Are you restoring from backup?

Selective restore would be cool. I used to start fresh but now I'm not losing a year+ worth health and activity data. Also, so many passwords and other things to worry about as well that an encrypted backup makes so easy.

In many ways it is easier to start fresh though, with iCloud Photo Library and Apple Music / Library for example.
 
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I don't see any reason to do a fresh install out of the gate since you can do that anytime. Doesn't it make much more sense to restore from backup and then do a fresh install if there are any issues down the road?
 
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RMSko said:
I don't see any reason to do a fresh install out of the gate since you can do that anytime. Doesn't it make much more sense to restore from backup and then do a fresh install if there are any issues down the road?
Click to expand...

If someone wants to tinker with a fresh installation experience. And slowly build everything back up. From contacts to their app preferences and home-icon-order. Yeah i can see that.. no harm there.

But I am so used to how things are, and I am not a big fan of chance when I just want it to work.
if only i had a second device I could just play around with without worrying about it being my main phone number, emergency thing, etc. I could jailbreak once in a while, try out thinking outside the box, try out fresh installs, have a phone for behind the scenes recordings, and i could test my backups, etc etc .. but i dont have money lying around that i can just get another phone for just that purpose.

I really prefer to just click ' make it so', and its exactly how i want it.. the way it was before... so yeah, i thought about it since my last post about this and i am confident now: backup.
 
I always restore from backup but I always reset all settings.
Never had an issue.
 
Good thread! I was just about to ask the same and rarely ask questions to you guys. So I always use backups when start my new phones but hate how it looks like my old phone after I do! This time I'm going to start it as a new phone, sync photos and contacts then surely it'll be just as good and I can pick and choose my apps from fresh.

I have so many wasted apps sitting on my current phone.
 
Yeah I'm restoring from a backup as it's just easier.. The bad thing about doing that is my 6+ 64gb is almost out of space so even though I got a 128, I'll be starting off with 64 again..

Kind of wish I got the 256 but nothing I can do about that now unless I dont want to get one on the 16th
 
These of us that have Apple Watches are most certainly restoring from a backup, i know i am. because the backup is going to contain all the health data that the apple watch has been collecting for as long as i had the apple watch and the phone has been collecting health data such as steps walked, energy etc even before the apple watch came out so yeah i think its important to get the health data over to the new phone as opposed to losing it all by starting fresh
 
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handsomelife said:
Ah interesting views, cheers everyone!

Just out of curiosity, the people that are doing fresh installs, is there any particular reason you're not restoring from backup?
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Like i-Liam has suggested, you can always try restoring from backup and then doing a "Reset all settings" (or doing the latter and then backing up). With this you won't have to worry about all your apps (and their settings), sms and iMessages and emails being completely removed, but at the same time clearing out any corrupted setting configuration you might have backed up since your iPhone 5/6. It will only remove all of your preferences for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Do No Disturb, Notifications, General, Sounds, Brightness & Wallpaper and Privacy which you can then manually reconfigure.
 
I have always restored from iCloud or iTunes backup. Never had any issues.

Starting fresh is a solution if you have problems. With that said, I never have had problems so I continue to restore from backup. One thing I do is to update everything, including going to latest iOS version in old phone. Close everything, restart phone and then save to backup. That is the backup I use to restore the new phone with. Always has worked for me. Can always to a fresh restore if you encounter issues, but why reload all the apps, loose past data, if I don't need to.

My two cents.
 
At this moment I'm feeling a bit lazy and hungry. A fresh install sounds like too much work...so restore it is.

This could change come ~9/29.
 
erasr said:
Good thread! I was just about to ask the same and rarely ask questions to you guys. So I always use backups when start my new phones but hate how it looks like my old phone after I do! This time I'm going to start it as a new phone, sync photos and contacts then surely it'll be just as good and I can pick and choose my apps from fresh.

I have so many wasted apps sitting on my current phone.
Click to expand...
You could do housekeeping on old phone. Eliminate unused apps, update ones you want to keep. The save that backup and use it to restore first. I intend to move to iOS 10 on old phone. Save that configurations to backup and restore new phone to that.
 
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Restoring from iCloud backup because a month or two ago I restored and set up as new my 6s as it was having battery issues. I had a ton of junk on it anyway. I also had to manually transfer my photo's back onto the phone 1 by 1 so they were in the order I took them in so definitely don't want to do that again anytime soon!
 
Here's a question: How different is restoring from iCloud backup to restoring from a hard backup from iTunes? I know when you restore from iCloud backup, it just remembers what apps you had but then it downloads them all again. I assume iCloud backup is just settings and list of apps you had, and any files stored locally like documents, etc.? So isn't restoring from iCloud backup almost the same as a fresh install (in terms of cache and stuff like that)? Correct me if I'm wrong, I really don't know...
 
Fresh start.

I actually like the initial setup process. Makes the device feel new.
If i just restore from backup, i feel like i'm missing some of the "new" magic ;)
 
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I'm on the fence this release. I want to start fresh like I usually do but with the 128gb this time I feel like I should restore. I normally dump all my photos from each device onto my cloud storage but I really like the new photo library technologies in the phone. Maybe I should finally give into iCloud photos?
 
jrlepage said:
Here's a question: How different is restoring from iCloud backup to restoring from a hard backup from iTunes? I know when you restore from iCloud backup, it just remembers what apps you had but then it downloads them all again. I assume iCloud backup is just settings and list of apps you had, and any files stored locally like documents, etc.? So isn't restoring from iCloud backup almost the same as a fresh install (in terms of cache and stuff like that)? Correct me if I'm wrong, I really don't know...
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Encrypted backups from iTunes saves all your passwords and other sensitive data i.e. data from my Apple Watch so I don't have to set it up all over again. It is also much quick to set up the phone in general. I would recommend doing it that way.

More info on encrypted backups if you have never done them:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205220
 
Clean install.

All the important stuff is in iCloud.

You get to weed out all of the apps that you never use by not installing them until you need them.
Safari is "Snappier!" (JK)
 
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