iPhone 7 Setting up a New Phone -- From Scratch or Restore from Previous phone?

[bballrob]

I received my new 128 GB Piano Black iPhone 7 PLUS yesterday. Opened it up last night and started setting up, but hit a major stopper when I couldn't recall my encryption password. I may have no choice but to set it up from scratch this time. A couple of comments from another thread got me thinking.

I always set up my new phones from scratch. I like to start fresh once a year when I get new hardware and not risk the potential for problems that comes from using a backup that was made on an older phone. A lot of people use them without problems, but I have seen some problems carried over to new devices. It takes a couple hours to set it up, but it's only once a year and it's worth it to me.

I absolutely agree with this philosophy. Password software (I use LastPass) makes this much easier.

These two posts definitely have my thinking that this may be the way to go. A couple of questions I have:
1. How do you go about putting on the apps you want and determining which ones to leave off?(Especially when the mount of your storage just DOUBLED!)
2. Is there a way to get my historical text messages onto my new device? There is some history there I'd like to keep from the old phone.

 

[bballrob]

One other thing. Some of you may have seen where i mentioned I couldn't restore from the Golden iPhone 6 PLUS to the 128 GB Piano Black IPhone 7 PLUS due to a forgotten encryption password. How do you delete that backup and password in order to just create a new backup that I could then restore from??

 

[Europa]

I received my new 128 GB Piano Black iPhone 7 PLUS yesterday. Opened it up last night and started setting up, but hit a major stopper when I couldn't recall my encryption password. I may have no choice but to set it up from scratch this time. A couple of comments from another thread got me thinking.





These two posts definitely have my thinking that this may be the way to go. A couple of questions I have:
1. How do you go about putting on the apps you want and determining which ones to leave off?(Especially when the mount of your storage just DOUBLED!)
2. Is there a way to get my historical text messages onto my new device? There is some history there I'd like to keep from the old phone.

1. Select Install on the ones you want to sync through iTunes (see screenshot).
2. Not really, aside from copying them or screenshots. They'll still be on your Mac, though.

 

[Europa]

One other thing. Some of you may have seen where i mentioned I couldn't restore from the Golden iPhone 6 PLUS to the 128 GB Piano Black IPhone 7 PLUS due to a forgotten encryption password. How do you delete that backup and password in order to just create a new backup that I could then restore from??

Make an iCloud backup and use it instead of the encrypted iTunes backup.

 

[Rafagon]

1. How do you go about putting on the apps you want and determining which ones to leave off?(Especially when the mount of your storage just DOUBLED!)

That's easy.

 

[Apple4me]

I've restored from backup on new phones for as long as I can remember and never had an issue. Maybe I'm just lucky

 

[iPutz]

Like others here, I always set up a new phone from scratch. It forces me to clean out some of the apps I rarely or never use. More importantly, I'm not introducing hidden old problems into a new phone by restoring from a backup of an older phone. JMHO

 

[Kratos]

I also do that. At the end of every year (or when I will get a new device), I do not even remember what I have installed, uninstalled, manually deleted, files, etc...

Also, LastPass app is something that I started using 1 year ago, and now I cannot live without it.

Hopefully this app will stay ONLINE forever

 

[bballrob]

Ok. I think it's time. The weekend is here. No work tomorrow. 7:23 pm local time. I'm ready to officially set up the 128 GB Piano Black iPhone 7 Plus.

 

[EverythingApple]

This question has always been one of mine too, but I don't want to lose data within apps and old text messages. Since it is a new iPhone and new iOS, will any remnants of my last jailbreak (on an iPhone 6 not Plus) be installed on a new iPhone 7Plus?

 

[imutter]

1. Select Install on the ones you want to sync through iTunes (see screenshot).
2. Not really, aside from copying them or screenshots. They'll still be on your Mac, though.

View attachment 44738

@Europa I got a question to #2
I understand you messages don't stay with starting your phone from scratch but with the handoff feature your messages are still on other devices like your Mac or iPad. Is there a way to recover it from there ?

 

[MCube74]

I always setup my phones as new from scratch. Can choose what not to install.

 

[Europa]

@Europa I got a question to #2
I understand you messages don't stay with starting your phone from scratch but with the handoff feature your messages are still on other devices like your Mac or iPad. Is there a way to recover it from there ?

The messages will still be on your Mac, but there's no way to port them back over to the phone from there.

You can, however, transfer the the messages folder over to a jailbroken phone.

 

[Europa]

This question has always been one of mine too, but I don't want to lose data within apps and old text messages. Since it is a new iPhone and new iOS, will any remnants of my last jailbreak (on an iPhone 6 not Plus) be installed on a new iPhone 7Plus?

Yes. Traces of the jailbreak and some jailbreak settings are backed up in iTunes/iCloud. This usually doesn't pose a problem. If it does, you could always restore to factory settings. You'll notice some of your old settings automatically apply when you jailbreak the new phone. One thing I like to do if I'm going to use a jb backup on a stock phone, is uninstall/disable all of my tweaks and then make a new backup that's as clean as possible. That minimizes the traces.

 

[EverythingApple]

Yes. Traces of the jailbreak and some jailbreak settings are backed up in iTunes/iCloud. This usually doesn't pose a problem. If it does, you could always restore to factory settings. You'll notice some of your old settings automatically apply when you jailbreak the new phone. One thing I like to do if I'm going to use a jb backup on a stock phone, is uninstall/disable all of my tweaks and then make a new backup that's as clean as possible. That minimizes the traces.

Thanks, Europa! I thought of that too late, though...

 

[EverythingApple]

Yes. Traces of the jailbreak and some jailbreak settings are backed up in iTunes/iCloud. This usually doesn't pose a problem. If it does, you could always restore to factory settings. You'll notice some of your old settings automatically apply when you jailbreak the new phone. One thing I like to do if I'm going to use a jb backup on a stock phone, is uninstall/disable all of my tweaks and then make a new backup that's as clean as possible. That minimizes the traces.

How would I know if it's causing a problem?

 

[Europa]

How would I know if it's causing a problem?

If the current problems you are experiencing are resolved after restoring to factory settings, it indicates that the problems were likely related to the backup.

 

[EverythingApple]

If the current problems you are experiencing are resolved after restoring to factory settings, it indicates that the problems were likely related to the backup.

There are just some settings that I can't put in manually. What backup settings could be jailbreak corrupted?

 

[Napoleon PhoneApart]

There are just some settings that I can't put in manually. What backup settings could be jailbreak corrupted?

They may not be files or settings that the user can access.

 

[B89rent89]

Suffered a stroke on Oct. 23rd, got out of the hospital yesterday. My iPhone 7+ was delivered while I was in hospital and I started to set it up as a new phone, which is something I always do. Part of the set up was to enter my phone number in order to use SMS messaging. I entered the number and clicked the "SAVE" button and rec'd an "Unable to save phone number" message.
Don't remember seeing that on any previous phone, although on some previous phones I did a restore from iTunes or iCloud. I haven't yet set my 6S+ back to "factory settings" and I'm wondering if that's the problem. Any ideas out there?