The frustrations (and time) associated with setting up a new iPhone (Updated)!

Update 17th October 2025

If you read the below report of my initial attempts to set up my new iPhone, you will see I was having persistent issues with syncing of iCloud data to the new iPhone and had to resort to re-setting my phone to factory settings and starting again.

While this did resolve the issues with downloading of my large Notes library (which got 'stuck' and wouldn't continue, leaving me without access to my important Notes), it did not help with the downloading of my big Photos library. 

Several days after the reset, the count of downloaded Photos in my Photos library was not changed. A call to Apple Support proved fruitless.

So, a week after the reset, I resorted to manually forcing the download of photos.  I selected a year's worth of photos at a time, then chose the Share option, then Save to Files. This forced the download of the selected photos and, when that download was done (which took a while each time), I cancelled out of that Save to Files process. This left the photos downloaded

By the 14 day mark, I finally had all my photos on the iPhone - and syncing has been working OK since. Phew!

I am none to wiser about what caused the download issues, but have seen on forums that this issue has impacted lots of people. One suggestion was that it may be caused by an overload on Apple servers, wit lots of people who, like me, have recently received their new iPhones, setting up these new iPhones at the same time.

One thing I also need to correct in my original article. The iPhone 17 and 17 Pro do have SIM card trays for physical SIMS. It is the iPhone Air that is eSIM only. So I was able to put my Belong physical SIM into my new iPhone without converting it to an eSIM.

Here's the full article, reported 4th October 2025

I received my new iPhone 17 Pro on Monday this past week, and it has been quite the exercise this time getting set up on my new iPhone. In fact, after 6 days, my iPhone is still not set up.

It is now Saturday, and it has been a 'work in progress' for the past 5.5 days - even though I restored from an iCloud backup, which should have brought everything from my old iPhone to my new iPhone. Unfortunately, even with an iCloud Backup, there is still lots of setup to do when you get a new iPhone and data to download from iCloud.

Here's my list if issues and setup tasks so far - and I'm sure that there will be more that I discover each time I use an app/account for the first time on this device.

Setup and syncing woes

My issues started with the initial setup of the iPhone - transferring my old iPhone's content and downloading data that has been sync'd to iCloud.

• My initial attempt to transfer between old and new iPhone over Wi-Fi failed, and I had to instead restore from an iCloud Backup. (I have seen this happen multiple times when assisting clients! It is very frustrating and wastes so much time.)
• Even after 24 hours, recent Messages chat history wasn't showing, despite Messages being stored in iCloud. The iPhone showed that Messages was syncing, but iPhone storage showed that no new data was being downloaded. This was finally resolved by turning off iMessage and turning it back on (after first trying turning off iMessage in iCloud and turning it back on - which didn't help).
• On day 5, when I went to look at a Note that had some important information that I needed while out, I found that few of my Notes had downloaded. Despite multiple attempts to resolve this, the Notes still wouldn't. The sync was stuck.

Another major issue was with syncing my iCloud Photos to the new iPhone. And this issue is ongoing!

• After 4 days, my huge iCloud Photos library still wouldn't download, even though it is set to Download and Keep Originals. 
  
  I purchased sufficient storage to download and store all my photos/videos, so that I don't need internet to view them.
  
  I tried everything short of resetting and restoring my iPhone. 
  
  I tried turning off iCloud Photos and turning it back - this didn't help. I changed to Optimise, then back again - with no luck.
  
  On night 4, I signed out of iCloud and back in again, hoping this might help. This initially appeared to work, quickly increasing iCloud Storage to 50GB (showing the download was occurring) before I went to bed.
  
  I thought that, overnight while charging, it would do a heap more downloading, but, alas, the next morning the storage reading for photos was only 13GB - and photos/videos were definitely not downloaded. I tested this by turning off Wi-Fi and mobile data and going into my Photos app. None of my photos could be viewed without internet. So it wasn't just an incorrect figure for the storage.
  
  Then, when I was in Settings->App->Photos on Day 5, I noticed a setting showing that Background App Refresh was turned off for Photos. This was strange, because there is not normally an option to turn this off or on for the Photos app.
  
  So I turned On that Background App Refresh setting for Photos.  (Note. ​Strangely, that Background App Refresh setting has now disappeared again from the Photos settings!)
  
  Photos seemed to finally started to download! By the time I went to bed on night 5, the 80GB of my photos had downloaded about ⅓).
  
  However, the morning of day 6 showed there had been no further progress overnight - the download was stuck again, and nothing I tried got it going again. 

With the above unresolvable sync issues, I have now resorted to resetting my new iPhone and starting the setup all over again (which will involve doing all of the below sign-ins and setups a second time 😢😢).

I will need to report back in the next newsletter about whether this resolves the issue. If it doesn't, my concern is that maybe there is some device fault preventing data download and I will be making an Apple Genius Bar appointment. 

A long list of app and account sign-ins and authentications

And then there was the long list of app and account sign-in and authentications - and is some cases, the need to set up things from scratch.

Luckily, my Passwords app on the iPhone stores all my passwords - otherwise, this task of signing in to so many apps and accounts would have been incredibly stressful.

• myID for MyGov had to be set up afresh for the new device, requiring provision of at least two forms of ID (which for me were drivers license and Medicare).
• As mentioned in a separate article, a couple of my credit cards could not be verified in Wallet. Here's an article on how I fixed this.
• I had to complete a long list of sign-ins and authentications for all sorts of accounts and apps.
  • Mail accounts (Outlook, Gmail, Exchange) needed to be signed in and re-authenticated in Settings and in the Outlook app. This authentication was done using old iPhone
  • Microsoft Authenticator accounts all needed to be re-connected/re-authenticated. This meant I needed to still have the old iPhone do that authentication, so that the new iPhone could be set up as another device for authentication.
  • Sign in to Commbank banking app and set up PIN/FaceID - required old iPhone to authenticate sign-in.
  • Set up of Macquarie Authenticator for accessing that bank account (which required using old phone to authenticate sign in to online banking, and scan a QR code to set up the new iPhone
  • My business Commbank EFTPOS device had to be paired with new device
  • Sign in to MyGov app 
  • Sign in to Telstra app
  • Sign in to Eufy security app
  • Sign in to Ring doorbell app
  • Sign in to Facebook, Instagram, Threads and X (involving authentication on another device)
  • Sign in to Klarna (replacement for Stocard) and Frollo (my budgeting app)
  • Finish setup of my Apple Watch so it is now paired with my new iPhone
  • Setup my credit and debit cards on the Apple Watch.
  • Sign in to Sonos and my robot vacuum cleaner
  • Sign in to Klarna
  • and the list goes on  

Transferring SIM to new iPhone

And then there was/is the issue of the SIM cards from the old phone ...

• The new iPhone is eSIM only. My Telstra SIM (for my personal mobile) had already been converted to an eSIM on my old phone, so I needed to work out how to transfer that eSIM to my new phone. I initially disconnected myself completely, but sorted it out after an initial panic! This transfer of the eSIM is done from within the Telstra app (which I had to set up first so that I could do this transfer).
• I also have a physical SIM in the old iPhone (for my business phone line). It is not a Telstra SIM, and I need to work out that Telco's process for converting a SIM to an eSIM so that I can then transfer it to the new iPhone. I will look up the instructions for that one this weekend!

It's a lot!

As I said above, I'm sure this is not the full list. It show that, even for me - someone who is very tech savvy - the process of setting up a new device is not easy and can come with curveballs and is tedious.

My message to iTandCoffee readers who are are thinking of getting a new phone is

• Be sure you are prepared with all the necessary passwords for your accounts and apps.
• Importantly, don't wipe or trade in your old phone until you have set up the new one - as you may need certain accounts to authenticate via that old iPhone to set up the multi-factor authentication on the new iPhone. 
• If you need help with setting up a new iPhone, here's where you can make an iTandCoffee appointment.