Feature Request: It’s time for a one-step iPhone setup process

The iPhone setup process has improved dramatically over the years. This year, as last year, I put my new iPhone next to my old one, and a good chunk of the setup was automated.

However, there are still more manual steps than I would like, and one particular pain point is that some of the gaps in the setup process don’t make themselves known until the first time you need to actually carry out particular tasks …

As Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says, there’s hours more work to do once the setup process is officially complete.

Apple has made moving over data from one iPhone to a new one really seamless. But the actual process of getting things going after that — logging into apps again etc — takes hours. Ultimate first world problem, but certainly Apple is working on this as the next step.

That latter comment is likely assumption rather than source, simply because Apple must be working on this.

The first additional step we’re likely to encounter is our iPhone inviting us to setup our cards for Apple Pay again. And even when it looks like this is complete, the app may only demand that a card be activated when we actually try to use it for the first time after switching phones.

There’s the fact that paired hardware devices don’t automatically switch over. Admittedly I have more headphones than some audio stores, but even for someone with one or two, it’s a pain-point. Likewise devices like Apple Watches, smart rings, smart scales, and so on.

Then there are all the apps that require us to login again. Adding to the fun of this, if we use two-factor authentication – as we certainly should, whenever possible – we have to generate new codes.

Banking apps can be even fiddlier. One of mine, for example, requires me to use the app on my old device to generate a security code before I can activate the app on the new device. Another requires me to dig out the hardware security device I use exactly once a year and whose battery was dead this year, requiring my bank to post me a new device.

So yes, as Gurman says, this is a first world problem, and of course there are big security challenges to creating a truly seamless one-step transfer process, which will require working with card companies, banks, and so on.

But Apple has solved equally impossible-sounding problems in the past – like how to update an iPhone to the latest version of iOS while it’s still sealed inside its box – so I’m sure this one, too, will prove to be solvable with enough imagination.

I very much look forward to the day when I can simply put my new phone next to my old phone, be asked to use Face ID to authorize, and then see my old phone cloned to my new phone, byte for byte.

Is this something you’d like to see? Please take our poll, and share your thoughts in the comments.

Photo: 9to5Mac