Using back up from another phone

rebel.ranter

Trying to sort a problem out for a friend.

I took a back up of their original iPhone & I have a fresh iPhone that I would like to put the back up on to.
Does the new phone need to use the same iTunes account as the old phone in order to take the back up of the old iPhone?
I cannot remember when the activation needs to happen, before or after the back up is done?

Owen

I did it yesterday when my 3gs was replaced. When you connect the phone, it'll ask you to activate with the SIM first, and then iTunes should recognise it's a new phone and ask if you want to restore the back up of *oldname* phone to the new handset.

rebel.ranter

Does it matter if I cannot access the original iTunes account that the original iPhone was on?

I have loaded a back-up from my iPhone 2G to 3GS before but they were both using my iTunes account. No issues doing a straightforward back up.

I just want to be sure that I won't be blocked from restoring the newly activated phone (on a different iTunes a/c) with a back up of the original iPhone that is linked to another (inaccessible, LONG story) iTunes account.

What I am asking really is: are back-ups you save on your local machine in any way tied to an iTunes Account?

Owen

I can't answer that I'm afraid

rebel.ranter

I'll give it a go anyway. I don't have the phones right now & I only have a limited time frame in which to complete the job so I was just trying to in armed with as much info as possible.
Thanks

rebel.ranter

Just to update, the process went smoothly. I was able to choose the back up I needed without the need to re-activate the "new" (2nd hand) iPhone.
I also managed to get all the music off the old iPhone onto the new one using copytrans, it was worth the $19.99.

guil

sharepod would of did the same thing for nothing

rebel.ranter

Unfortunately I didn't know about Sharepod at the time:(
Thanks for the tip though.