You’re ready to purchase your new iPhone but are understandably nervous about setting it up, transferring your phone number, and making sure you don’t lose your personal data. Fortunately, activating a new iPhone is a dream task for a DIY-er, as Apple has made it incredibly simple to follow a series of prompts leading to an ideal iPhone setup.
You don’t need to bring your new iPhone to the Apple store or even your cell phone carrier. You can order your new iPhone online or buy it in person before bringing it home and setting it up in a matter of minutes.
Once you go through the process of activating a new iPhone, you’ll wonder why you don’t upgrade more often. Let’s take a look at the steps you’ll need to follow to activate and set up your new iPhone, as well as how to troubleshoot any issues you may encounter during the process.
Time to check out your shiny new iPhone. This may be the only time you’ll see it without fingerprints on the screen!
Unbox your iPhone, plug in the charging cable, and plug your phone into the charger before turning it on. Next, power on your new iPhone. Simply press and hold the power button on the right side of your iPhone. ‘Hello’ will appear on the screen in different languages. Now, swipe up to begin the setup process.
When you choose the quick start option to activate your iPhone, Apple will give you a series of prompts to follow on the screen. This is the easiest way to set up your iPhone, and you can always make manual changes after your iPhone has been activated.
If you are upgrading from one iPhone to another, you can opt to bring your old iPhone close to your new one to speed up the activation process.
Your new iPhone is a clean slate, with all kinds of new features and lots of storage, so before you go gobbling up all that extra space with photos and screenshots you’ll never look at, take some time to clean up your photo library using CleanMy®Phone. This handy app will look at all of your similar shots and group them into categories so you can delete the rest. It also shows you all of your screenshots, duplicate and blurry images, and other clutter so you can get rid of them in no time.
Time to connect to your Wi-Fi network so you can begin following prompts on your iPhone. If you bought your iPhone from your cell carrier, they likely already installed an eSIM card. If you bought your iPhone from a third party, your iPhone will prompt you to activate the eSIM card.
Some carriers do not support eSIM. If you are in this situation, your best bet is to contact customer support for your carrier and have them walk you through the eSIM activation process.
Remember those little plastic cards that you had to manually install into your phone for it to work? This is how carriers connected to your phone and assigned it a phone number. An eSIM card is essentially a digital version of the SIM card. There is no actual card, but there is an activation process, and once it is completed, your old phone number will be transferred to your new phone.
New iPhones use both a passcode and Face ID to unlock your phone. In most cases, your iPhone will use face recognition to unlock, as well as to use features like Apple Pay, log into certain apps, or make purchases through the Apple Store. If the iPhone doesn’t recognize your face, which happens in some lighting conditions, or if you are wearing sunglasses, then you will have to enter your passcode.
When you are activating your iPhone, you will be prompted to set up Face ID. Your iPhone will use TrueDepth technology to register and remember your facial features. During the process, your iPhone may prompt you to turn your head or look at the camera.
Once your Face ID is set up, your iPhone will prompt you to enter a passcode to unlock your iPhone.
Now, when you turn on your iPhone, Face ID will automatically unlock your iPhone, and the passcode screen will appear if your phone can’t read your Face ID.
If you are upgrading from another iPhone, you will now have the option to seamlessly transfer data and apps from your old iPhone to your new one. All you have to do is give permission for the transfer on your old iPhone and hold the two phones close to each other. It’s like magic.
You can also transfer your data from an iCloud backup, restore the data from your Mac computer, follow directions for moving data over from an Android phone, or start fresh without transferring any data at all.
Once you’ve transferred your data, you will want to sign into your new iPhone using your Apple ID, and if you don’t currently have one, you will be prompted to create one. Your Apple ID will give you access to iCloud, Apple Pay, and any apps that you purchase in the Apple Store.
You must log in using your Apple ID to sync your data to iCloud. Once you log into your Apple account, your iPhone will prompt you to set up Siri, iMessage, and FaceTime and enable location services and automatic updates.
Siri is an AI assistant that will answer questions and help you with various tasks on your iPhone. Siri recognizes your voice and will only answer when you ask it a question. To set up Siri, your iPhone will ask you to repeat a few different phrases so it can teach itself to recognize your voice.
Apple Pay allows you to enter your credit card information once and then quickly pay for items using Apple Pay on your iPhone. Your iPhone will prompt you to enter your credit card information and store it securely on your phone.
Congratulations! You’ve just completed the automatic activation of your iPhone. You can make changes to everything you’ve set up within Settings on your iPhone.
To test out the activation, use your iPhone to make a phone call, send a text message, and send an email. You want to make sure everything is working perfectly before you sign off on your old phone.
What happens when you’ve followed all the prompts on your iPhone, and it still won’t activate? Here are some tips to try:
As you can see, Apple makes it incredibly easy to activate a new iPhone. If you’ve been waiting to upgrade because you’re nervous about the activation process, you can set your mind at ease.