Like many others, upgrading to the iPhone 5 will be your second or third iPhone. The question now comes to one of two paths. One path will lead you to turning on your new iPhone 5 and setting up as new, while the other path will have you restoring a backup.
For those of you who want to backup your current iPhone and restore it to the next, this guide is for you. There are two options for backup in this case. The first is to use iTunes, and the other is to use iCloud. This guide will walk you through using iCloud to bring you through the process of back and restoral.
1. Start by locating your settings icon and tap to open. (Your icon may not be in the same spot)
2. Locate iCloud and tap to open.
3. Scroll down until you see Storage & Backup and then tap.
4. Once in the Storage & Backup menu, scroll down until you see Back Up Now. You must be on a WiFi network to back up and must have iCloud backup turned on. If you don’t have it turned on, simply turn it on. Apple gives you 5GB free to use for backup. 5GB is usually enough to backup with, but if you have a lot of photos then you may need to purchase more. Tap on Back Up Now when on WiFi and the iPhone will begin to back up. The iPhone will continue to back up every night when plugged in and on WiFi.
If you need to manage other devices you can do this by tapping on the Manage Storage option on the same screen. Once on the Manage Storage screen you can manage each device individually and what they back up. You can also delete back ups. As you can see below, I have 4 devices that back up and due to my needs I pay for extra storage.
That’s all you have to do to back up and be ready for your next iPhone. Make sure however, that you backup photos and videos either to photo stream (which is a back up option in the same menus above) or to your computer. You will also want to make sure you have your music backed up on your computer or if you purchased the music from iTunes you can just re-download it later for free.
When you get your new iPhone all you need to do is input your iCloud username and password when asked if you want to restore from an iCloud backup. If you have more than one device, as I do, just select which device you want to restore and in 30-60 minutes all will be back as it was.
This guide will work for not only iPhones, but iPods and iPads as well. For a more visual guide, see the tutorial video below.
I’m having difficulties downloading from iCloud to my new phone
Did you use the Apple iCloud service to back up your iPhone files? You can login in the same iCloud account on your new iPhone and try to restore from the backup files, which was uploaded by your iPhone. And then you get a easy way to restore iPhone from old iPhone’s backup.
If you want a one-click solution to restore backup files, try some 3rd party program, such as FonePaw iPhone Data Recovery, iPhone Backup Extractor and so on, all of them are maybe your great assistance.