Input from the edge of civilization, or it feels that way sometimes. No internet/wifi. One, maybe two bars of cell service. Limited hotspot. Migrated from 12 mini to 13 mini.
Quick start got me half way. There were some hiccups because it could not finish. So I then proceeded to “manual setup.” iMazing saved the day (no, I don’t work for them). I have made a habit of having it download apps to my MBAir. So once the handshaking between the two minis was done, I plugged new mini into MBA and restored the apps and the rest of the data from there. The final hiccup was the Verizon gotcha about disabling “Find My” on the old mini before full activation of the new mini was possible. It would have been easier if I’d done that first, but missed that in the directions.
Quick Start definitely smoothed the way, even in my unusual circumstances.
Somewhat related, I had to reset my AppleTV to factory defaults to have it pair via bluetooth and connect to the new hotspot/network. It could not find the bluetooth or the hotspot even when I entered it by hand. I could find no way to reset just the ATV network settings. It was all or nothing.
I had a similar glitch while using Quick Start. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the time passing, and eventually the “waiting to activate” changed to an activation failed message. I said OK, and was given the opportunity to activate via Wi-Fi. Since the Quick Start process had already transferred over my Wi-Fi credential, I just said OK, and two minutes later, it was back to the normal Quick Start process.
This is the first time in years that I’ve used Quick Start. (I usually set up a phone fresh, clean, no transfers or restores.) I can’t say it was quick, but other than the activation wait, it seemed to go reasonably fast, faster than others reported. Of course, I was working and focused on other things, so I might not be the best judge.
But other than the temporary activation glitch (thanks Verizon), I have to say, I think Gruber called it right. Good experience overall.
I just helped an elderly friend set up her new iPhone 13 yesterday and we used Quick Start and it went great. (Same for my own phone a couple of weeks ago.)
The only problem we encountered is that she hadn’t brought her credit/debit cards with her, so we couldn’t set them up in Apple Pay. When Quick Start offered that as part of the process, I unchecked the listed cards she didn’t have with her, which I later decided was a mistake.
That’s because Quick Start didn’t move those cards over. The cards it did I noticed had a “set up later” button, which I think would have saved the basic card info and meant we only had to input the three-digit verification code for each card to activate it.
Instead, since I unchecked those cards, they aren’t in her Apple Pay settings at all – which means they’ll have to be set up from scratch. (That’s a pain for her since she has cards from tiny regional banks and credit unions that require a phone call to the bank’s customer service to turn on Apple Pay for the card. The bigger banks have it all automated so it’s much easier.)
Anyway, the lesson is to leave the cards checked during Quick Start, even if you plan to finish adding the cards at another time.
My phone came today. The instructions online are a bit different from what you describe - they recommend skipping quick start and starting a manual setup, which allows you to activate the phone, then you can use Quick Start in a later step. It worked fine for me. So, thanks again for posting that - there were no instructions included with the phone and I never would have thought about disabling find my first on the old phone.
As for Quick Start, it’s been mostly been ok, but there are a few glitches. I did need to enter the password on a couple of email accounts, and my Tweetbot second account isn’t right. I’ve had to start a bunch of apps just to make sure that everything is set up right.
New iPhone 17 Pro Max arriving Friday. Just wondering whether the advice given here four years ago still stands (basically “use Quick Start”)? Also, I’m a little fuzzy on the cable vs. WiFi choice. Would I use a Lightning to USB-C cable to connect the new phone to my current phone (13 Pro Max), like the one I’m using for power now from my MBP charger?
[@ace: I debated starting a new thread. Please split if that’s more appropriate.]
You don’t need a cable at all. You do a little dance with scanning a barcode on one phone to verify the other, lay them next to one-another, and go make coffee. It’s pretty amazing.
If I recall correctly – and I could be wrong since I only upgrade a phone once a year – last year I finally remembered to do this with a cable instead of wifi. The theory is that it is faster. Since I have a ton of apps (almost 500) on my phone, it usually takes several hours to update via wifi as downloading them from the App Store takes a while.
I was disappointed that the cable didn’t move the apps over. Those are still re-downloaded via the App Store, so the cable wasn’t much faster. I doubt I’ll bother with the cable this year. Wifi works just fine.
We tried it with my daughter’s phone a few years ago, however, and it failed every time. First with trying to activate the new SIM for Verizon’s network, but even after activation, the migration failed each time, telling us to start over.
We ended up restoring from an iCloud backup, which worked fine.
For my personal phones, I backup over USB to my Mac and migrate from that. Which has always worked.
Yes. That’s been the case for a long time. And, unfortunately, it means that you always end up with the latest version of everything, even if you were deliberately holding back an upgrade for some reason. And if the app is no longer available from the Store, you can’t migrate it.
iMazing can work around these problems (installing from backed-up app images), but that’s an extra expense and it’s more work.
I did this on the 13 Pro to the 15 Pro and, yes, it worked great. Both are Pro devices so can use up to USB3 speeds. I’d think there was no advantage if either of the devices was a non-pro (or the Air), though, as they are limited to USB2 transfer speeds.
It’s been 18-ish months but I recall that it took less than an hour to transfer. 45-ish minutes I think. My 13 Pro had about 190 GB used (of course a lot of that is iOS and apps from the App Store, which transfer after the data transfer is complete.)
I could be wrong, but I think that’s because apps are specific to the device - only the parts of the app that are needed on that hardware (including the processor) are brought over.
This is incorrect. No Lightning iPhone ever supported USB3 or achieved USB 3.1’s 10 Gbps. I believe the only Lightning device to ever have supported USB3 was a 1st gen iPad Pro 13" and the 2nd gen iPad Pros. And that was at only 5 Gbps (3.0) and only through Apple’s USB3 camera adapter.
Your connection from iPhone 13 Pro to 15 Pro was stuck at 1990s USB2 with a colossal real-world ~25 MB/s. Which is compatible with the 45 min you mentioned. Had that transfer indeed been going at just USB 3.0 rate (5 Gbps) you would have seen a whopping 1.3 TB transferred in those 45 min. Quite a feat on a ≤512 GB iPhone 13 Pro.
Now I will say that while those 480 Mbps were embarrassing already back in the 13 Pro days, the fact that this same limitation is still imposed on a $1k Air released in late 2025 is just beyond the pale. USB3 welcomes you to the year 2000, Apple.
Oh dear! I’ve done five or 10 wireless transfers, both personal and clients, over the past few years and they’ve all completed successfully. It is certainly prudent to back up to your Mac before doing them, however.
I can’t think of any reason to upgrade first. I’ve done both an upgrade to a new phone from an older version of ios and from the same version; it always worked fine both ways.
As I understand the upgrade process, the apps upgrade your data, not the OS.
So your photo database will be upgraded by the new version of the Photos app, your Music database will be upgraded by the new version of the Music app. And the data files used by the Yoyodyne Foobomatic will be upgraded by the new version of the Yoyodyne Foobomatic app.
If you migrate first, then the old data will migrate to the new device, and the apps on the new device will upgrade the data files (probably in the background over time as you launch the various apps).
If you upgrade first, then the apps on your old device will upgrade the data files (probably in the background over time as you launch the various apps). The latest version of the data (whether upgraded or not) will migrate to the new device. Any databases that have not yet been upgraded will be upgraded on the new device.
So I concur - it should work the same either way. The data upgrade may go faster if you migrate first, because the new phone will be faster, has new flash chips, and probably has more storage. But I can’t think of any other difference.
And I’m assuming the new phone will come with iOS 26 installed. Probably a good assumption, but I’d sure hate to find out otherwise.
Side note: I ordered my new phone from AT&T (they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse), and they said the new phone would be here Friday, which is the official First Day of Availability afaik. But FedEx told me they were in possession of the phone yesterday, and it was being shipped “FedEx Standard Overnight”. Yet the Friday delivery date still stands. I can only assume that Apple has told FedEx (or AT&T) that no one gets their phone before Friday, no matter what level of service they specified.
So just to close the loop on my part of this revived discussion, I did indeed use the Quick Start method (phone 1 camera on “fuzzy beach ball” displayed on phone 2), and it worked flawlessly and relatively quickly. My particulars were iPhone 13 Pro Max/128GB on iOS 18.7 to iPhone 17 Pro Max/256GB on iOS 26. I’d say the entire process took at most 20 minutes (including the two or three user intervention required steps). At that point the new phone was ready to go and began the app reconstitution step (or whatever you call that when the circular progress indicators are being displayed over apps/folders), which took another 10 minutes or so.
Indeed. It’s the same for restoring an iPhone from backup. This is convenient because it means backups can be much leaner. It’s a problem though for people who rely on older versions of apps, especially when the App Store no longer offers the version they had been using.
