iPhone 16 Pro set-up trials and tribulations

TL;DR: Everything went smoothly, with the following exceptions:

• iPhone transfers are not compatible with guest Wi-Fi networks that use tickets, or the personal hotspot feature of an iPhone
• Before trying to transfer a Watch to the new iPhone, be sure to turn off the old iPhone first, or it will cause conflicts
• Don’t try and run a device to device restore whilst the Watch is trying to connect to the new iPhone, because the success/failure dialog will kick the transfer into touch and you will need to start it again!
• Secure apps (banking, password managers and authenticators) are reassuringly secure and, whilst they transfer the data, they do require you to register the new app with base, before they let you in. This is a good thing, and I was expecting them to do that.
• Apple’s security works annoyingly well, as well – resetting my old iPhone afterwards took an hour, because I had the anti-theft protection turned on.

My iPhone turned up yesterday, about a week ahead of schedule.

I had it delivered to work, because we have a lot of problems with things being delivered to the flat – mainly the drivers can’t be bothered to come into the drive and walk to the door, so they just stop on the road and we get a message that they failed to deliver, because nobody was home – even though we have taken time off work or are in home office, to ensure that somebody is there! It happened again this week, a large package was not delivered on 2 consecutive days, because it was big and bulky, even though my wife was at home on both days. I ended up having to carry the damned thing half a mile through town back to the flat yesterday evening!

Anyway, I had to wait until I got home yesterday evening to set it up.

We have a guest Wi-Fi at work that works on a ticket system basis and it is incompatible with Apple’s transfer procedure – I tried to do it a few weeks back after somebody ran over their private and company phones and we had to transfer them to new devices. The problem is, the old iPhone is booked into the guest network. When you hold the new one near the old phone, it the old one asks if you want to transfer your settings and data to the new phone. If you say yes, the first thing it does is log the new phone into the Wi-Fi network – which means transferring its ticket across, so the old iPhone is the kicked from the network, so the process stops as both devices have to be in the same network.

I tried it with a third iPhone acting as a hot spot as well, but that fails too.

So, I had to wait until I got home. I managed to set it off and it transferred most of the data and settings in about 15 minutes, then it set about downloading the missing apps. Most things transferred.

Signal needs a separate transfer process, as it is a secure messaging client, so I understand that. That needed about 40 minutes (over 10GB of messages and images). But the my Apple Watch had been trying to couple itself with the new iPhone and its failure message kicked Signal’s transfer about half way through, so I had to restart that.

The Watch was interesting. My old iPhone was still powered on, because I was still transferring data and I also wanted to ensure things like Authenticator codes were successfully copied, before turning it off. In the end, I had to turn off the old phone and restart the Watch, then it worked straight away.

The things that didn’t “work” are not surprising.

• Microsoft Authenticator needed to be manually restored – I set a backup up on the old iPhone, then restored from iCloud on the new one. That is legitimate.
• My banking apps all transferred the data, but needed me to legitimate myself with my banks, before they would log me on.
• Likewise, the Apple Wallet and Apple Pay wouldn’t activate the cards until the banking apps had been re-legitimated.
• 1Password had copied across my safe, but it was locked, until I logged back into it.
• Microsoft locked my Outlook.com address in Apple Mail until I logged back into it.

I think all of that is perfectly legitimate. Those are all essential services holding confidential information that would be disastrous if it got picked up by a hacker.

Pretty much everything else went across without a hitch. Interestingly, Google Authenticator went over without me having log back in or re-legitimate it in any way, great as I forgot to test it, before I reset my old iPhone, not so great, as I would prefer it to take security as seriously as the other apps.

Excluding the time for Signal to transfer the data, everything else was done in under an hour. The only annoying thing was, surprisingly, the Apple Watch transfer.

So far I’m very happy with the 16 Pro, I found the new camera button very intuitive and was working its controls “naturally” within a couple of seconds of calling up the camera.

The Torras “ultra thin” case I bought is a total fail. I have used Torras for the last couple of cases on my iPhone 13 Pro and they were grippy and flexible and nice to work with. The “utral thin” doesn’t have the lip over the screen, so it is almost flush with the screen, but it is made of hard plastic and has sharp edges. I also missed that the protection around the camera bump is 3 times a thick as it needs to be, because it flips open to make a stand, making a mockery of the “ultra thin” label. The first thing I did this morning was to order a Spigen case, which are generally very good. The one good thing about the Torras case is that the cut-out for the camera button is very well done and doesn’t restrict the use of the button in any way. I hope the Spigen is just as good.

Finally, resetting my old iPhone 13 Pro, so that my daughter can have it, was also thwarted by Apple’s security. I had the Protection for Stolen Devices turned on with the setting “always”. That meant, when I tried to reset it, I had to enter my password, which started a 1 hour countdown, then after the hour, I could try again, re-entering my password and using FaceID, only then did it let me reset the phone. This is great news, but also annoying, when you are trying to do it yourself and the phone hasn’t been stolen! 😀