The new iPhone 7 was announced on Friday last week and I ordered it on the next day. I could extend my mobile contract 6 months ago but I waited until the new iPhone was released so I can order it with the contract.
I received the notification already on Wednesday this week that my new phone was sent and the package was delivered on Saturday. I spent most of the Saturday setting the phone up.
The new iPhone 7 looks very similar to my old iPhone 6. If I wouldn’t tell you that the iPhone 6 is on the left and iPhone 7 on the right, would you have knows which is which?
I checked the stats and measurements of the new iPhone online. Many online articles wrote about the camera in the back being bigger which is why most of the covers would not fit. Even the Apple website offers new bumpers for the new iPhone and iPhone 7 is not listed in the compatible products for the iPhone 6 bumpers. Nevertheless these articles sounded hopeful about being able to reuse the bumper so I decided against ordering a new one before the phone arrives. I planned to use most of the iPhone 6 accessories for the iPhone 7. I guess I was a bit naive. 😛
So the first thing I did after unpacking the phone was to put the card in and to put the bumper from my old iPhone 6 on. The bumper fits perfectly but there is this tiny little issue with the camera being bigger and its position changed too so half of the lens is covered by the bumper. 😦
I haven’t even unpacked my new Quad Lock Bike Kit for the iPhone 6 but I guess I won’t even have to anymore.
On the plus side, I am giving my old iPhone 6 to my brother and he is biking a lot so he can use the Quad Lock too but I don’t think he will want the red bumper though. 😛
I searched through my drawers for my old bumpers and found this transparent one which I could cut easily with scissors. I think this could temporarily work, at least until I get a new bumper. I will have to get a new Quad Lock too. *sigh*
Ok, so I think we established now that the covers and bumpers from the iPhone 6 cannot be used for the iPhone 7. Next up I switched the iPhone on so I get it up and running.
Let’s start with a warning: do NOT reset your old phone before reading the next section. I did and it cost me an entire day of setting up the new phone from scratch.
How to switch to a new iPhone
Restoring from backup
Make sure that the old phone and your new phone are on the same iOS version, otherwise restoring from the backup will not work. So if you have an iPhone 6 with iOS 9 like me and want to switch to an iPhone 7 with iOS 10, upgrade the iPhone 6, create backup, restore new phone with that backup.
What not to do: my iPhone 6 was still on iOS 9 when I created the backup and I reset the phone so restoring the new iPhone with iOS 10 from this backup did not work. Also since I reset the iPhone 6 I couldn’t do the upgrade and create a new backup. Oops! I lost all the data from the phone and from the apps, including the chat history for Whatsapp.
Pairing with the Apple Watch
One Apple Watch can be paired with one iPhone. So when you are switching to a new phone, you have to first disconnect your devices on your old phone. It’s very important to do this on your iPhone so that a backup is created from your Apple Watch.
Un-pairing using the Apple Watch app creates a backup that’s stored on your iPhone. Un-pairing by resetting your Apple Watch directly does not create a backup. If you need or want a backup, make sure you un-pair using the Apple Watch app on your iPhone.
If you get a new Apple Watch or iPhone, you’ll need to un-pair your old one.
What not to do: reset your old phone while the Apple Watch is still paired with it because pairing the watch with the new iPhone will not work and furthermore your Apple watch will not be backed up. Because of this mistake I had to reset the Apple Watch on the watch directly and only then could I pair it with the new phone. This meant hours lost on installing all the apps on the watch again and even worse I lost all the workouts, progress and achievements in the Activity because I didn’t have a backup.
Creating a new backup
After setting up your new phone, make sure to create a new backup of your new phone.
Deleting the old backup
Next delete the backup of your old phone directly on your old phone: go to Settings, iCloud, scroll down to Backup and turn it off, then go back and click on Storage, then Manage Storage, then under Backups go on your iPhone, and hit Delete Backup.
What not to do: I reset the old phone before deleting its backup and now if I want to delete the backup of the old phone on my new phone or on my iPad, I get an error message “Cannot Delete Backup: This backup cannot be deleted at this time”. The backup size is 3,2 Gb out of the 5 Gb that we get for free on iCloud so needless to say that I definitely needed to free up that much space on iCloud. The only way I found on hwo to do this was to restore the old phone again from the backup in order to be able to delete the backup directly on the old phone. It’s the second time that I made this mistake, hopefully I learned my lesson and there won’t be a third time.
Conclusion
We are all very excited when we get a new phone or tablet and all we want to do is get the new gadget up and running as fast as possible but keep in mind that certain steps have to be taken to prepare the transition from the old to the new device.
I never had any problems switching to a new iPhone until now but then again I didn’t know about the iOS version issue so I was actually very lucky that it worked the previous times since luckily both devices were on the same iOS version.
Switching to the iPhone 7 wasn’t a nice experience, mainly because of my stupidity, but losing all the data is the biggest problem out of all of this. On the bright side setting up the iPhone from scratch has its advantages: the backup size is just 70 Mb compared to the old phone’s 3,2 Gb!
All in all I am very happy with the new iPhone 7, I still need some time to get used to the new home button and I need a new bumper. *sigh*
FitGeekGirl 
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