What's the current view on migrating current setup to a new iPhone vs setting up as new?

Software
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TL/DR: So what’s your experience? If you been using an iPhone for at least say 7-8 phones, have you ever just setup as new? Or do you restore from the old phone every single time?

Longer: I’ve migrated my setup (apps, data, everything) from old phone to new, for every single iPhone going back to the iPhone 4S. Of course most of the time that was via cloud backup/restore. The last couple of times I’ve migrated directly iPhone to iPhone. I don’t think I’ve ever had an issue.

But lately I get periodic pauses or sluggish behavior on the phone (15 Pro Max at the moment) that makes me wonder. Should I (we?) periodically setup an iPhone as new to get rid of of cruft? It’s not clear to me if that kind of thinking has any relevance in 2024 w the way iOS manages things internally?

In my head I’m picturing something like a Windows \temp folder with 7500 old files sitting in it, and hoping iOS doesn’t have an equivalent.

Of course at this point setting up as a new would be a real hassle and I def don’t want to do it unless I’m really confident there’s real benefit. And I do keep my iPhone fairly tidy. I don’t have an insane number of apps. I delete ones I don’t use. And no space crunch, I prob have over 75GB of free storage.

I’m assuming that Apple has over the years designed the system so my concerns aren’t actually a problem, but sometimes I wonder. :slight_smile:

Thanks in advance!

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Mid-summer last year I finally gave up on my old 5 and replaced it with a 14. As I had apps and data that I rely on on my 5 I backed it up to iCloud and then first thing with the 14 signed into iCloud and eerything was restored.

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In my case, every new hardware device starts off fresh. Major software versions are bare metal installs, minor versions are simply installed.
It’s not as labor intensive as it sounds, especially with iCloud support.

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I used to be pretty fastidious about starting from scratch whenever I replaced hardware and often when a major OS release came out. There’s something to be said for resetting everything to the defaults and reevaluating your choices; the apps you have installed.

Somewhere along the line that fell to the wayside for phones. Last fall when I upgraded from an iPhone 11 to a 15 Pro Max, I used Migration Assistant. It worked without a hitch and I couldn’t have been more pleased. When I needed to migrate my setup from one workstation to another for work a month or so later, I used it again and it worked flawlessly.

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Migration assistant worked fine for me from my iPhone 8 to iPhone 15. I would have started from scratch, but I had this work Okta’s OTP application and wanted to make sure it got migrated because I didn’t want to go through our Helpdesk support in order to enrol a new device. Turns out everything worked ok but Okta got migrated but not its private data (that’s a securty feature for Okta :wink:

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I just upgraded from an iPhone XS (2018) to the latest-model iPhone,the 15 Pro Max. I used migration, rather than setting up the new phone from scratch. It worked fine.

I think I’ve always used migration, never had a problem.

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Agreed. The migration tools are (have become) very good. They certainly will get the job done.

To me, it’s an excuse to re-examine the cow paths I have created between releases.

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I think we can all agree that beginning from scratch on an iPhone is less necessary than with a macOS, there is this notion that cruft accumulates more easily on a regular device, while on your iphone you just have to delete the apps you don’t use and there you go.

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I use migration on the Mac as well as iPhone and iPad. Haven’t had a problem.

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As we discussed previously, I did the same thing, except I had a Xs Max. How are you liking the 15 Pro Max now that you’ve had it a while?

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Very much. Bigger better display, better camera. What’s not to like?

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Glad you’re happy with it. Iirc, you weren’t sure you’d like the larger screen.

Coming from the Xs Max, the camera is probably the most dramatic difference to me, followed by the extra RAM and faster processor.

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I went from an 8+ to a 15 Pro Max and what I dislike is the size and am missing Touch Id. Apart from that, the device is glorious, I specially enjoy the camera.

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I dislike small phones and Touch ID has never been reliable for me, so it’s all been positive for me so far. I agree—the camera is glorious.

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I will probably set my next iPhone up as new as I did last time. I have an iCloud backup, but it would be nice to set up my all too many Apps out in rather better order than I can achieve by dragging them around and into folders. I might even find that I get rid of some of that “other” storage.