Best practice on how to move back to main iPhone from backup iPhone?

[Cassady]

Hello all,

Long story short, we mistakenly thought the SO's iPhone 8+ was dead, and required a trip to the iStore.
It was completely dead, so nothing was done to it in terms of wiping etc., but it has iCloud backup active.

Wiped her older iPhone 7, that the little guy had been using.
Restored from iCloud back-up overnight on Saturday, so Sunday saw us move her 8+ simcard over to the 7, and life continued, with her now using her old phone for the past week.

Only, turns out the 8+ made a miraculous recovery. It has been sitting around for the week, with no simcard, or Wifi being switched on. So essentially a charged-up paperweight.

The SO has obviously been using the older 7 now as her phone since the above incident. So Outlook emails, WhatsApp and iMessages etc. have been coming down onto the 7, which I presume (given the restore), has also been backing up to iCloud...

Question: How do I transition back to the 8+?

Do I simply deactivate the "Find my iPhone" feature, and sign out of iCloud, on the 7?
And then transfer the simcard, and switch Wifi back on, over on the 8?
Or would it be preferable to backup the 7, and then wipe and reinstall the 8+ from the backup?

I presume (??) the Whatsapp messages will be pulled down again – since Whatsapp does its own backup thing.
iMessages are few and far between, so no big worry.
Photos/Music will presumably sync at some point again.
Outlook emails will presumably be sorted out server-side, to achieve parity?

So, given the above, I'm inclined to think the simple switch (as opposed to nuke and restore) will be fine??
Am I missing something?

 

[eyoungren]

If it were me, I'd simply connect the 7 to iTunes and make a backup. I'd then connect the 8 to iTunes and restore it from the backup you just made (probably turn the 7 off at this point).

Once the restore is complete and you've checked everything is there then you can do what you wish with the 7.

 

[Cassady]

If it were me, I'd simply connect the 7 to iTunes and make a backup. I'd then connect the 8 to iTunes and restore it from the backup you just made (probably turn the 7 off at this point).

Once the restore is complete and you've checked everything is there then you can do what you wish with the 7.

I was kind of hoping to avoid this - MBA doesn't have that much storage space available for backup...

Any other suggestions would be most appreciated!

 

[mikzn]

Like you mention on your post - most of the email and messages will probably update via imap or sync via iCloud if you just put the sim card back.

there may be a few apps that have data that may be missing but outlook, messages, iCloud etc. will all update

Most likely there is not a lot difference since the time passed has not been that great? unless you have some special application that is critcal?

Why not just switch the sim card and see if there are any missing items that are important? You can always put the sim card back