iPhone 13 Pro Max iPhone Upgrade Voice Mail Question

[C7 POWER]

Hey everyone, so my wife decided this year to also upgrade her iPhone (First time she pre ordered with me, so its cool).

She currently has the XS, and her biggest hold back on upgrading is she has several voice mails (Some she hasn't listened to yet) from a dear friend who passed away from Cancer early last year, and understandably she refuses to lose those. I cant remember, does restoring the new phone from her last cloud back up, also carry her voice mail messages over? AT&T Service if that matters.

 

[SisterBlue22]

I have voicemails in my current phone from 2018, 2019, and 2020 (I have stuff in "Deleted Messages" in voicemail from 2017), so they span across several new phones, so I'm guessing they do transfer in with the backup. They might not last forever in the database or whatever it is they are stored, so she might want to record them onto another format. I totally get it - I have text messages from a dear friend who passed away that will never be deleted. Hugs to her.

 

[C7 POWER]

Thank you!! We figure we will restore my new phone on Friday when it delivers first before we do hers just to ensure they do restore to the new phone for her.

 

[BrettDS]

I believe that the voicemails are stored at the carrier and not on the phone at all. And as such, you are at the whim of the carrier in terms of retention. If they are as important to her as they sound I would really do something to get those transferred to something under your control. Maybe even making several copies.

The carrier may only save old voicemails for X amount of time, or they may have a system failure that causes them to be lost or they may upgrade their system without transferring them to the new system. She could wake up one morning and find that they are gone with no notice and I would doubt that the carrier would really put much effort into trying to restore them for her. Voicemails are generally considered to be pretty disposable.