[Anonymous]

Anonymous on November 15, 2015 at 12:52 pm #2878

I am upgrading from an old iPhone 4S to a 6+ and hope to migrate my text messages along with my other data.  I have heard mixed answers regarding whether or not I will lose my text messages and need to know if I must physically review, copy, paste, and email to my self each one worth keeping before I start this process. This is a daunting task to say the least considering I have 5+ years worth of texts, some with important information I do not want to lose. Thank you for any advice you can provide.

[David Payette]

David Payette on November 25, 2015 at 5:40 am #2993

Dear Joy,

If you back up your current iPhone to iTunes or iCloud and restore from that backup when you set up your new iPhone, your text messages will not be lost. If don’t restore from a backup when you set up your new iPhone, your text messages will be lost. Moral of the story: When you set up your new iPhone, restore from an iTunes or iCloud backup and you’ll be all set.

Hope this helps clear up the confusion, and enjoy your new iPhone!

All the best,
David P.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on November 29, 2015 at 11:13 pm #3081

Hi, I am jumping in on this subject because I am also upgrading from a 4s to a 6 and I have a question about the backup process. I was told that I should back up to Icloud because in order to test my phone before okaying an exchange, my phone will be wiped. Here is my concern. I have a 64 GB iphone. According to my phone my capacity is 56.6 GB and 6.2 GB available leaving me to assume my total data is around 50GB. I did the icloud backup and total storage is 200 GB (I upgraded to achieve this backup) and available is 193 GB so the backup is 7 GB.

Does that seem right? Is the backup compressed? Can I assume that my 50 GB of data is contained in the 7 GB backup? I am worried that once the phone is wiped I won’t have the ability to get things back if the backup is incomplete.

Susan

 

[David Payette]

David Payette on December 21, 2015 at 12:28 pm #3197

Hey Susan,

When you back up your iPhone to iCloud, it only backs up your personal data, not the apps themselves. That’s because all your apps are stored in the App Store, so Apple doesn’t need to back them up. If you have a lot of apps and only 7GB of photos and videos, that’s absolutely normal. When you restore your iPhone from the iCloud backup, all of your apps are automatically download from the App Store and your personal data is downloaded from iCloud. You don’t see any of that happen – your iPhone will look the same as it did before.

If you do have a lot of photos and videos and they’re not showing up in iCloud, or if you’d like to learn about how iCloud backup works, check out my article about iCloud Storage.

Thanks again and all the best,
David P.