Need help copying data from iPhone 4 to iPhone 4s

[Diogones]

Hey all,

I am helping a friend copy all of her stuff from her old iPhone 4 to a new iPhone 4s. However, I have some questions and confusions about how the copying works.

Since she doesn't have a computer with an iTunes library on it (all of her music is comprised of iTunes purchases) she can't simply attach the 4s to a computer and sync everything that is on the old iPhone.

Is there any way that I can directly send the data from the old iPhone to the new one, without a computer as a middle man? We've already used iCloud to copy her apps, contacts, and other data when we set up the new phone, but other things such as music and pictures are much more complicated, because she doesn't have iTunes Match, and only the Photo Roll is synced, not any other photos that were taken and saved on the iPhone 4.

Any help on transferring everything, and I mean everything: music, photos, ringtones, preferences, etc would be most appreciated!

 

[HazyCloud]

An iCloud backup will restore media purchased from iTunes, all photos and her preferences.

I'd take her 4 and back it up to iCloud. Then take the new 4S and restore from that backup. Every time I have restored from an iCloud backup, my iTunes purchases have been restored. If for some reason they are not, you can just go back to your purchase history and redownload them.

 

[apple4kim]

friendly reminder, you will need to upgrade your iphone 4 to iOS 5 to use iCloud.

An iCloud backup will restore media purchased from iTunes, all photos and her preferences.

I'd take her 4 and back it up to iCloud. Then take the new 4S and restore from that backup. Every time I have restored from an iCloud backup, my iTunes purchases have been restored. If for some reason they are not, you can just go back to your purchase history and redownload them.

 

[Diogones]

Thank you both for the prompt and helpful replies! Well I have backed up the iPhone 4 to iCloud and restored the iPhone 4s from that backup, HazyCloud, but I don't think it restores music. For one thing, the music was never restored on the 4s whenever I did the backup, and for another, I think you need iTunes Match to backup music with iCloud.

However, she could download everything from the iTunes store again, via the Purchase History option on her iPhone 4s, but we've run into problems with that. It's slow, even with a fast Wi-Fi connection, and each song has to be downloaded individually; there doesn't appear to be a Download All option, except within each individual album selection. Since she has purchased well over 14GB of music from iTunes, it really isn't practical to go through and select each and every song to download at a time, even with albums downloading as one item.

Another idea I've been harboring is to create a new iTunes library on my Mac, and then rip the music from the iPhone 4 to the library using iRip, (since syncing to the library would obviously wipe out the music on the phone) and then sync contacts, calenders, ringtones, and so on with the iTunes sync option. Once everything is in the new library, I could hookup the 4s to the Mac and sync everything back onto the phone, as well as restore the 4s from a backup I'd make of the 4 using the backup device option. This would at least transfer over the device's lockscreen and wallpaper, as well as the app layout and other preferences.

The only problem with this plan is, what to do about her pictures? If I try to sync anything besides the iCloud photos to the iTunes library, I run the risk that the photos would also be wiped out, just like music.

I guess I could use DropBox to sync the photos, although it might be time consuming, as there are literally hundreds of photos on her device, and copying them over one at a time would be tedious. Maybe a photo transfer app would work?

Any other suggestions would be appreciated; I didn't realize how tough it could be transferring data from one iPhone to another when the first iPhone was never synced to a computer in the first place!