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iPhone X New iPhone XS Max - Set up as new?

D

dan-K

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 19, 2012
322
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Hi Guys,

Getting the new iPhone XS Max tomorrow, upgrading from my current X.

Tomorrow I may set up a new for the first time ever, having previously always restored from backup.

With iMessage in the cloud and my WhatsApp backed up in the cloud, will I lose anything by doing this?
 
Yeah I'm setting up as new. Even though I've been on iOS 12 beta, all I need to do is messages in Icloud and I'm completely fine.
 
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I ALWAYS set up my new phones as a "new phone" - Just a nice clean start, little more time consuming to reinstall apps you had from the App store.. Heck many apps I have on old phones, I just won't even bother to install again since I simply don't use them or completely forgot about them.

I rather have a totally fresh phone off the bat, nothing that may be "useless" installing from a backup.
 
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You won't lose anything if it's all backed up in iCloud, just make sure to open WhatsApp and do a final manual backup so when you install it on your new phone you can restore from a backup.
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PhillyGuy72 said:
I ALWAYS set up my new phones as a "new phone" - Just a nice clean start, little more time consuming to reinstall apps you had from the App store.. Heck many apps I have on old phones, I just won't even bother to install again since I simply don't use them or completely forgot about them.

I rather have a totally fresh phone off the bat, nothing that may be "useless" installing from a backup.
Click to expand...
There's no harm in restoring from a backup since it only installs directly from the store the Apps you already had and the data just as it was, but if you prefer to waste time with a clean install...
 
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Problem I encountered with setting up new iPhone last year, if you want your old photos/videos on the new iPhone, then they have to be synced on through iPhoto. When doing that on the new iPhone, you can't delete any of these photos on the iPhone.
 
1050792 said:
You won't lose anything if it's all backed up in iCloud, just make sure to open WhatsApp and do a final manual backup so when you install it on your new phone you can restore from a backup.
[doublepost=1537452525][/doublepost]
There's no harm in restoring from a backup since it only installs directly from the store the Apps you already had and the data just as it was, but if you prefer to waste time with a clean install...
Click to expand...
Nah, it's not a waste of time for me.
 
Restore from backup is the best and easiest way. I’ve been doing it every year since iCloud backup was released. I don’t understand why some people like to start from scratch every time. I always hated going through all if the setup and configurations on all of my apps. Such a waste of time.
 
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DDustiNN said:
Restore from backup is the best and easiest way. I’ve been doing it every year since iCloud backup was released. I don’t understand why some people like to start from scratch every time. I always hated going through all if the setup and configurations on all of my apps. Such a waste of time.
Click to expand...

I agree. I also used to setup my new iPhone as new, but for my last couple of iDevices I have restored from iCloud and everything has gone smoothly.
 
I rather not carry over any bad info from iOS 11 and any iOS 12 betas that I'm on so I'm starting fresh, restoring from messages in Icloud and all iCloud information I cousins passwords apps need to filter through.
 
I have set up every new iPhone with an encrypted iTunes back up. I backup to the cloud nightly but when it come to restoring my new iPhone I always use encrypted iTune to restore. Never had any problems.

The cloud will do it but can take a while. The encrypted iTunes backup only takes me like 20 minutes but that includes all my images and music.
 
Bootleg Gucci said:
Problem I encountered with setting up new iPhone last year, if you want your old photos/videos on the new iPhone, then they have to be synced on through iPhoto. When doing that on the new iPhone, you can't delete any of these photos on the iPhone.
Click to expand...

Is there maybe another way to transfer the existing pictures onto a newly set up phone?

DDustiNN said:
Restore from backup is the best and easiest way. I’ve been doing it every year since iCloud backup was released. I don’t understand why some people like to start from scratch every time. I always hated going through all if the setup and configurations on all of my apps. Such a waste of time.
Click to expand...

It's a good opportunity to clean up all the installed apps, I always have a lot on my phone that I'm not actually using but somehow still hesitate to delete. So, start from scratch and install only the apps you need :D

I'm upgrading from an iPhone 5s this year. I'm thinking that because it's so old there are a lot of default settings and stuff that changed over the years (and are more in line with the current technical abilities of the phones) - so this might be a good reason to set it up as new as well. I'm still undecided.
 
Set up as new accomplishes nothing but wasting a lot of time. It's totally unnecessary unless you're selling the phone.
 
Set up from new annually - as per the upgrade cycle. A few reasons:

- I like to spend all day setting my settings up, restoring apps and not install the apps I used to have but don't use
- Apple often change little things, like the length of iMessage received vibrations - you miss these if you restore as it'll just use your old setting
- I like the fresh and clean feel
- I'm a computer guy, and back in the day, a clean start was always the best.

With iMessages in the cloud, it makes sense to start from fresh.
 
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for me I'm coming over from Android and don't really care about anything other than photos/contacts. I've got all my photos in Google Photos and contacts in Google so all I need to do is do one last sync prior to setting up the new phone and then I should be good.

In the past when I had iPhone's I would always set up the phone via a prev backup but now I prefer setting them up as new phones so I can choose what I want instead of having to go through an delete stuff I don't want. Doesn't seem as clean as a process for me as setting it up new. Also the comment about subtle config changes in apps is true and if you use a backup you may just get those old settings.
 
I've never set up as new before, I've always restored from a backup. However, I'm looking to set up as new when I receive my iPhone XS tomorrow.

With iCloud photo library, and messages in iCloud now, am I going to miss anything by setting up as new? I don't mind re-downloading my apps and getting my settings just right. I just want to make sure I'm not losing any important information otherwise.
 
I agree. I’ve done both (set up as new and from backup) and I don’t experience any difference other than more time it takes to set it up as new.
 
Another thing I recall, setting up iPhone as New saved me a lot of gigabytes of storage (after installing same apps, logging in, syncing photos, music, contacts, messages, etc). Restore from backup (since 2011 iPhone) used like 100+GB, while setup as new was around 80+GB.
 
So if you setup as new what happens to your iCloud backup from your old phone? Does it take up space on iCloud and then you'd have two phone backups? (the old phone and the new phone backup)
 
What I missing? For you folks who set up as new, won’t you lose all progress in your apps such as games and health trackers?
 
i dont use either of those so. all i have to do is move my pics, reinstall apps and music. the longest part is getting all of your home screens, folders and settings done. Something ive just always done to avoid any issues that may be on the old phone. Also a great time to delete unused apps.
 
I've done it both ways, but I don't think there is a down side to doing an encrypted back-up and restore using iTunes. I have many different email and other accounts, and this method preserves them. It used to be a pain having to reenter all the passwords. As far as using the cloud to get apps if setting up as new, or using the cloud for backup and restore, the process might be very slow as many will be hitting the servers.
 
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