New iPhone 7: a middle-ground alternative to reinstalling vs. restoring?

[netnative]

Anticipating delivery of an iPhone 7, I am looking into the question of whether I should perform a new setup and reinstall everything from scratch or restore a backup. The debate is rather old and there are ardent advocates of both alternatives. Since reinstalling everything is very time consuming, I am considering a middle-ground alternative which is described in the following steps.

1. Install iOS 10.0.1 on the iPhone 6s.
2. "Reset All Settings" on the iPhone 6s.
3. Perform an encrypted backup of the iPhone 6s with iTunes.
4. Setup and activate the iPhone 7.
5. Restore the encrypted iTunes backup on the iPhone 7.

The intended objective is to maximize the health of the system without having to endure the process of reinstalling 179 apps. The reasoning behind step 2 is not to carry unto the backup settings of the older hardware that might potentially cause issues with the new hardware.

All comments are welcome but I have a particular question. With a view towards maximizing system health and minimizing potential issues, is it better to choose “Restore from iTunes Backup” during the initial setup process or select “Set Up as New iPhone” and then restore the encrypted iTunes backup?

Thank you for your help.

 

[adammull]

I don't know the answer to your question I will simply say that setting up as new isn't seen as chore for those of us in that camp I think because we love playing with a new device anyway. I would be on the new phone regardless so might as well tweak it. I find I usually end up adding or deleting apps anyway, plus the backup, FOR ME ANYWAY*, always has bloat in it. GBs of crap.

*I put that in caps because inevitably someone will disagree with me.

 

[Bigserver1]

I restore from backups, but that's because I use iCloud for all my photos on my phone, as well as iMessages. I've got text threads with my wife, as well as between us and our nanny, each with hundreds of pictures of the kids that I don't want to lose. Between iMessage and photos alone I've got 17GBs of storage used.

What I should do is go through and save all the pics I want, but I just don't want to spend that kind of time right now. Additionally, I've never had issues with backups.

 

[ANTAWNM26]

Backuptrans only add what you want so new phone it backs up new phone state and then you add what you want