Ugh. Can you relate?
Like getting old doesn't have enough problems without technology... Getting a new phone has to be among the worst of things (just below buying a car, a new house, and picking out a casket).
Yet, both of us took the plunge and got new phones. Not because we wanted to, but we needed to. Our old phones we being more and more uncooperative (not unlike me), and we feared they were just going to quit one of these days. So...
I went from an iPhone 8 to an iPhone 16 (I can't even see the top of this learning curve from where I stand), and Jane went from an 11 to a 16 Pro (she wanted the better camera).
HOW IT HAPPENED
We went to Best Buy, as we have done for most of our phones, and it turns out they now just have Verizon employees in-house. So, after the customary, "Oh, we don't even offer that plan anymore. For a mere few dollars more we can get you all these extras (that we don't want)!" Yada yada. We are supposed to be receiving a "free" ($10/month) iPad in the mail.
Anyway, I probably should have opted for an older model, but they didn't have any on display (if you can imagine). At least we are supposed to get ~$450 when we return our old phones. So he changed our plan and we paid the taxes and whatnot, then... THEN, we needed to drive across town to an actual Verizon store to pick up our phones! Yeesh!
That was about all I could muster for the night. Spending nearly $2,000 for a couple devices that we couldn't even use yet. Um, and no one bothered to tell us none of our chargers would work on these phones! Let alone a new case and screen protector... Uh, NO, I do not want the insurance for an extra $20/month!
THE SWITCH
We'd never done the changeover ourselves, but didn't want to spend yet another $50 per phone to have them do it, so we waited until the next day to tackle that.
I watched a couple Youtube videos and it didn't really look too difficult. Much easier than the Verizon salesman explained to us anyway. So, while Jane was at an after-work event, I decided to go for it by myself!
All I had to do was set my old phone next to the new phone and turn the new one on. It immediately started a series of prompts between the phones and seemed to be going pretty well. That is... until they texted me some code number, and I had to leave the prompt screen to retrieve the texted number... and there appeared to be no way to return to the screen doing the transfer!! So I ended up having to abort the process on the new phone, restart it all over again, and hope for the best (Jane had to do the same thing later on her phone).
That was really the only glitch during the changeover - that I'd discovered initially. It switched all my apps and settings and everything easy peazy.
However, Jane texted me when she was on her way home. I received it, but when I texted her back, it went to my old phone instead of her phone. Then my texts starting going right back to me. This is because for some reason we share an iCloud account, and we can't seem to figure out how not to. Once Jane got home we finally figured out what I'd done wrong in the setup process and got that straightened out. I don't think I can even explain it...
THE ONLY APP PROBLEM
So far (so far), the only app I've discovered that didn't successfully make the transition was my Garmin watch. I messed and messed with it between both phones last night and wore myself into a fury trying to get the phone to "discover" the watch. I finally had to just go to bed and resign myself that I might lose all my run history and not be able to use my watch for my 8 miles today.
This morning I tried a few more things and, lo and behold, I finally got the watch and phone connected. For awhile. It wasn't exactly how I had it before, and after monkeying around, I then got the watch into some funky mode that wouldn't allow me to do anything. I just called customer support because I was tired of googling possible fixes and racking my tiny little pea-sized weary brain.
The watch and app appear to be working now, but I do need to go into the watch setting to try to get it set back up how it was. Whatever.
So, that's the long sad story of two old farts getting new phones. It ain't pretty... And I doubt it's going to get any easier here on out.
Now I need to figure out what all we need to get to charge the stupid things!!! I tried looking at the store yesterday, and it just made my brain hurt.
Ugh.