Just checking if anyone has done this before and can offer the best pathway. My older daughter is getting her first phone. We added another line on our Verizon plan to get the Apple 14 phone with it. It comes with its own, new phone number of course.
What I ultimately want to do is have this be my wife’s new phone (with her old number) and have my daughter get my wife’s old apple xr phone (with the new number).
I’m trying to figure out if it is best to activate the new phone with the new number and then swap numbers later. If there is a more direct way to accomplish this.
I would think this might be common with kids getting their own (new to them) phones.
I would just put the new sim in the old phone and the sim you took out of the old phone into the new. If Verizon doesn’t have any special procedures that should work. There are apps to move data and apps from an old phone to a new. Check if everything is there and perhaps save a backup to a computer. Then factory wipe the old one and put in what you find appropriate for the daughter.
If this is with physical SIM cards, you simply pop the card into the phone you want associated with that number. It’s the SIM card that the number is attached to, and the phone will have the number of the card inside it.
The only issue I can see is that the iPhone 14 in the US is eSIM only, so it’s likely that Verizon may send out the phone with the eSIM already setup.
You will probably need to wipe the old phone and remove the SIM, transfer the eSIM from new to old, and then wipe the new phone and get a new eSIM in the form of a QR code from Verizon. If they send out the new phone without the eSIM, I would do the reverse, setup new from old and let it transfer the physical SIM to an eSIM, then wipe old and install the eSIM.
IMO the people to ask are Verizon. Given that US phones in general and Apple phones in particular are so locked-down, all these procedures folks are Googling up might work. Or might leave you in a total mess of lost data and confusion.
I’d start by making sure both old phones are fully backed up to iCloud or whatever.
Then I’d bring all the equipment to my local store and explain what I want done. If they sound stupid, leave and visit a different store or come back when another shift is on duty.
You’re right this ought to be a common request and so they ought to have a standard procedure to do it that will work with no loose ends.
And that’s exactly why I buy my phones myself and then get a SIM-only plan, rather than getting a branded and locked phone bundled with a contract. I can put whatever SIM card I want (physical or eSIM, as the case may be) into it.
If the OP has a branded and locked phone that came with a contract, then there’s the option of getting it unlocked; where I live, lots of places offer this as a service for very little money. The legality of this varies by jurisdiction, so you’d need to check that; plus it will void the warranty, but that’s not an issue if the warranty has expired anyway.
This is probably what I should do, but my one and only visit to an apple store was so unpleasant that I’m willing to risk getting caught in a mess of data and confusion.
Ill try to check how ‘set up’ the new phone is already before deciding my next step
You want a Verizon store, not an Apple store. Lesser crowds & fanwanking, but probably not much more competence.
Again I’ll caution that although you can’t break any hardware permanently, both wife & daughter can end up with a completely blank phone, no clue what apps they used have, all stored passwords lost, every photo and stored file deleted, all contacts lost, completely blank calendar, etc.
That’s worst case, but depending on how tech-clueful you are working on these, or how tech-clueless wife & daughter where when setting up their phones, all of this stuff may be backed up and transferable seamlessly. Or none of it is/will be.
I’m sure everyone is waiting to know if it was a Comedy of Errors or Much Ado About Nothing.
It went fairly smoothly actually. It’s amazing how iPhones can clone each other just by being next to each other. The only snag was swapping the two numbers. There’s a nice Swap Devices button on the Verizon website, but I think that only works if both have eSims.
Verizon chat was the way to go and they were able to swap it for me relatively quickly. So All’s Well That Ends Well.