iPhone 13 Upgrading to iPhone 13...questions about how best to do it

[ericinboston]

Hi all. I have an iPhone 7Plus with iOS 14. I am upgrading to the 13 tomorrow in the store and am looking for advice on how best to do.

• I have an iCloud account with about 10GB free
• I am not currently utilizing the iCloud Backup feature of my iPhone 7, but I do keep my photos and calendar on iCloud.
• My pix take up about 18GB on my iPhone
• My music takes up 80GB on my iPhone and I know there's no way to push that to iCloud
• I want to hold onto my iPhone 7...I also want to keep 100% of everything on it since it's a great device. I want to continue to use it as a camera, music player, and web surfing.
• I want my new iPhone 13 to grab all my iMessages, Calendar, Contacts, and Mail.
• I do not need to copy over my pix or music to the new iPhone 13

Therefore, is the best way to utilize the Backup feature of iCloud?...back up the 7 and restore it to the 13? I should be able to plug my 13 into my computer and copy all the 80GB of music again.

If the Backup feature is the way to go, currently my problem is that I do not have enough iCloud storage so I will have to delete some old backups from other devices on iCloud.

I do not see a way for the iPhone 7 to show me how much data it will back up...it simply tells me there is not enough space on iCloud. And there doesn't seem to be a way using the Backup feature to disable backing up some features. The "Learn More" area of the Backup when it tells me there is not enough space on iCloud ( https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207428 ) does state that a)it will include pix and b)if the pix are already on iCloud it won't copy them again...all the more reason I would like to know what it's going to back up because 8GB free on iCloud should be plenty when I compare it to the Settings>General>Storage area on my iPhone 7.

Lastly, since I am doing this in the store and want Apple to handhold me to make sure the 13 is all set, I can't be there for 5 hours waiting for iCloud...any advice or experiences on how long it takes to download/restore a backup off iCloud on Day 1 of an iPhone release on Apple's in-store wifi?

UPDATE: iCloud backed up my iPhone 7 and it is 3GB which is nice and small.

Anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[now i see it]

I just did this two days ago.

Back up your old 7 to your Mac
Plug your new iPhone into the Mac and boot it up.
It’s setup assistant will guide you and prompt you to do an iPhone to iPhone transfer. Decline.
Scroll down and choose restore from computer- then restore it.

Done.
Backups don’t actually contain the apps themselves, just links to them, so after the phone is done being restored from a backup it still has to down all your apps again from the App Store autom

iCloud backups up or down take forever. Hours and hours and hours…
They work, but unless you’ve got a 200/200 internet connection- it’s a murderously long wait.

I don’t know if an Apple employee at a store will have the time to set up your phone for you. It takes a long time.

I just did mine (30 GB data) restoring from my Mac and it took about an hour.

 

[ericinboston]

I just did this two days ago.

Back up your old 7 to your Mac
Plug your new iPhone into the Mac and boot it up.
It’s setup assistant will guide you and prompt you to do an iPhone to iPhone transfer. Decline.
Scroll down and choose restore from computer- then restore it.

Done.
Backups don’t actually contain the apps themselves, just links to them, so after the phone is done being restored from a backup it still has to down all your apps again from the App Store autom

iCloud backups up or down take forever. Hours and hours and hours…
They work, but unless you’ve got a 200/200 internet connection- it’s a murderously long wait.

I don’t know if an Apple employee at a store will have the time to set up your phone for you. It takes a long time.

I just did mine (30 GB data) restoring from my Mac and it took about an hour.

Thanks for your help! I use Windows so that should work as far as backing up...not sure about plugging my new iPhone 13 into Itunes on Windows and expecting a setup assistant. But I don't think you can restore a backup from an iPhone 7 to an iPhone 13 (or iPhone A to B for that matter) using the iTunes backup/restore method (at least on Windows)...when I've backed up my iPhone 7 in the past via iTunes, it's a monster 150GB file and as I understand it, is meant to restore to my iPhone 7 if I ever wanted or if I bought a new iPhone 7.

When I moved to the iPhone 7, the person at the store walked me through it which was great.

My iPhone 7 just backed up to iCloud and it's 3GB so that's a)small and b)interesting that it complained when there was 10GB free on iCloud that it could not back up my iPhone until I freed iCloud to like 20GB free.