
How do I clone my new 3G Apple iPhone with my old Apple iPhone?I just upgraded from a first generation Apple iPhone to a shiny new 16GB white iPhone and am excited to switch over completely. All my data, phone book, etc are on the old system, though, and I am perpetually anxious about first sync as I'm afraid that the empty phone address book will overwrite my huge address book data already on the computer? How do you clone the old iPhone and the new? I also just got a new Apple iPhone, though I oped for the black 16GB unit rather than the white one, and I was also curious how things would go. I expected that while I was at the Apple Store the tech helping me would plug in the old phone, run some super mysterious Apple-only utility, suck the brains out of my old phone (well, not literally!), then plug in the new phone, push the "clone" button and *poof* I'd have my new phone completely bit-for-bit identical to my old phone. Alas, that's not exactly how it happened. In fact, I walked out of the Apple Store with a new phone that made and received calls, but that was it. Nothing else worked, no apps were downloaded, none of the music and video I'd bought at the iTunes Store were on, zippo. Scary since I was on a trip and about 900 miles from my office! Fortunately, I sync my iPhone on my laptop and so I simply plugged in the new phone and figured worst case, at least I could copy across the address book. Here's what promptly happened:
Looks good, cheery, reassuring. Right? No voice of The Steve saying "hey, welcome to iPhone!" but I can probably live without that anyway. :-) I clicked on the "Continue" button and got here:
Ahhh... that's what I wanted. A few "yes, I agree to these goofy legal terms that I'm never going to read anyway" windows and finally, it was rockin, with a "restore" progress window. This process took rather a while and when it was done, I still didn't have everything I wanted. In fact, it took a couple of "sync" events before all the apps were transferred onto the new iPhone (Apple, are you listening?) but finally it was done, and not only did I have my address book, but recent calls, email configuration, Web bookmarks, applications, and everything else. Except there were two notable exceptions that surprised me. The first was that not a single password was copied across. For every service I use, notably including voicemail itself, I had to re-enter passwords, which initially seemed like a pain but upon thinking about it, I like the additional verification step. The other missing piece? A big one: my entire iTunes library. Probably for reasons of digital rights management (DRM), nothing from my music library (which, ironically, is why I got the bigger iPhone in the first place: my original was only a 4GB device) was copied onto the new phone. The good news, I suppose, is that I can now pick and choose just what I want installed to fill up all the cavernous space on the new device. Generally, though, I was pleased and impressed how easily I was able to clone all the essential data from my old Apple iPhone onto my new one. I hope this helps you out too!
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Cell Phones and Mobile Phones
(Article 8413)
Tagged: apple iphone, apple itunes, iphone 3g, iphone apps, itunes application store, sync Previous: How can I check the last time someone logged into my Gmail account? Next: How do I download audio files from Web pages? ![]() Subscribe!
Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader. please help me , i dont know much about computers or hi- tek stuff i have a iphone and i want to trick it all out with all the software stuff , frreee wifi a better antenna , can i send my phone to some one who can help me , for a allright charge you know , my name is nelson gonzalez and i am parralyed from my chest down thise will really help me a lot. Posted by: nelson gonzalez at April 1, 2009 5:09 AMthanks for this post. it really eased my mind in converting from 1st generation i-phone to 3GS today. - the sync had me worried. - thanks again! sej. Posted by: scott at June 19, 2009 2:59 PMWARNING!!!! I totally got screwed over in this senario. Its all fine and dandy if the phone lets restore from the back up of the oldphone but my new 3GS didnt have the up to date software so it FORCED me to set up the phone as new, hence I still have not figured out if or how I can get all my information like photos, contacts, and email back. SOMEONE PLEASE HELP! Posted by: Chris at September 10, 2009 8:10 PMi wish i would've read your instructions on cloning a new iphone w/ your old one, but alas i didn't... i set up my new iphone as iphone2 (afraid i would wipe out all my old iphone info if i did otherwise), now i can't figure out how to transfer my apps and contacts to my new 3g. please help! Posted by: Amy at January 10, 2010 10:08 AMI have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...
I do have a comment, now that you mention it!
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