Four years ago when I went from an iPhone X to an iPhone 12 Pro I got sufficiently annoyed at the upgrade process that I wrote myself some notes for next time. There were two main problems then. One was that you needed to unpair your Apple Watch from the old phone and re-pair it to the new one in order to get its data transferred to the new phone, and the other was with transferring over all the two-factor authentications that you’ve set up. Now I’m upgrading to an iPhone 16 and not following them… because Apple tell me that the watch changeover works by itself these days; and I’ve moved most of my 2FA things into 1Password which works across devices.

First thing they tell me to do is upgrade my old phone to the latest operating system iOS 18. I wasn’t planning on doing this but I might as well do it while I wait for the new phone to be delivered. It goes smoothly, doesn’t take very long and when I go to check for the Apple Watch OS update I find that the phone has already kicked off the download of WatchOS 11. The watch took way longer than the phone to update but it was all still done before the delivery driver was even halfway round their journey to me. I made sure everything was backed up to iCloud and that was about it.

And the upgrade was definitely a lot more magic than last time and wouldn’t have driven me to write a blog post if I hadn’t already started one. Follow the instructions on the new phone screen, bring the phone close to the old one and everything started switching across. My watch switched without taking it off my wrist, Apple Pay cards just wanted me to confirm their CCV codes, and the phone number switched itself via eSIM as well.

And continuity of two-factor authentication was not a problem either. I knew that 1Password was going to be no trouble but I’ve also found that Google Authenticator, which I rarely use but might have some older codes in, popped itself onto the new phone without needing any kind of login.

I think I’ve been through most of my regularly used apps and, I should have kept a count, but it feels about 50/50 as to whether they kept me logged in or not. The most annoying thing was that logging into Facebook on a new phone gives them another opportunity to make out that uploading my contacts is an essential part of the process. I’ve refused every other time you’ve asked guys and this time is no different.

My iPhone 12 Pro was at 78% battery health and couldn’t make it through more than a few hours away from a charger. I could have had a new battery fitted for £85. I vacillated on whether to do that but the lure of a shiny new phone drew me in. The differences between the iPhone 16 and the iPhone 16 Pro are small enough that staying with the Pro line didn’t feel worth £200 to me. And the differences between the phones from year to year are now minor enough that the four-years-newer phone doesn’t really feel that much different at all, though going from Pro to not-Pro will have tempered that a bit.

At first I upgraded my iPhones every two years and they were fantastically better, then it stretched to three, this time I managed four and I wonder if anything will happen in the next few years that means I don’t want to wait five years for an iPhone 21.

But I’m pleased to say that the upgrade procedure has definitely improved in the last four years!