How to Prepare Your IPhone for the Apple Trade-in Program
For the first time in my life, I decided to use the Apple Trade-in program. Yes, I know you can get a better deal if you use one of the many different services to sell your iPhone to a third party. The problem is, my iPhone X battery is complete junk, and any sites I think of selling it to will not accept an iPhone like this. Apple doesn’t care, so it goes to the exchange program.
While Apple’s setup is pretty straightforward, you need to do a little more than just toss your phone in a drawer Apple sends you and call it every other day. However, you don’t need to spend more than ten minutes (or so) getting your exchanged phone ready for the big goodbye – with one caveat.
Disconnect Apple Watch from your phone
If you own an Apple Watch and sell your iPhone, I assume you have another iPhone that you will then use to pair. After all, the Apple Watch needs an iPhone.
While you can probably go through the next step without any problems – copying your old iPhone to a new iPhone via the settings menu of the latter – I ran into a quirk where my new iPhone didn’t recognize the Apple Watch that I connected to my old iPhone. However, about an hour after the process finished, my Apple Watch restarted and magically connected to my new iPhone.
I’m not entirely sure if the process was supposed to work this way, but if you need to use your Apple Watch with your new iPhone immediately, make sure you unpair your old iPhone first via the Watch app> All Watches link . at the top-left corner> i > Unpair Apple Watch.
Copy Your Old iPhone to New iPhone
If you’re trading an old iPhone because you bought a new one and don’t want to start from scratch on the last one, you are given the option to copy all your settings, apps, and other information from your previous iPhone to your new one. This process takes about a minute to run through the setup screens on a new iPhone.
However, depending on how much data you move, it may take some time for all of your data to move – one to two hours, perhaps. Set up the transfer process before bed and leave it on overnight. With any luck, your new iPhone will have everything that was in your old iPhone.
Oh, and don’t forget to take your SIM out of your old iPhone and transfer it to your new iPhone (or whatever new device you’ve purchased).
Sign out of iCloud
It is very important. Click on Settings, click on your Apple ID, scroll down and click Sign Out . This will remove this device from your Apple ID. If you used Find Me to keep track of your device if it is lost, you will be prompted for your Apple ID password to disable it.
Finally, you will be asked if you would like to keep a copy of your data on this phone. It doesn’t matter as you’ll be resetting it soon anyway, so just hit Exit to continue. It only takes a few minutes to delete iCloud data from your old iPhone.
Reset and Erase Your iPhone
Tap Settings , tap General , scroll down and tap Reset . Choose the second option: ” Erase All Content and Settings . “ Enter your password or password one last time. Click on the red “Erase iPhone” option . Say goodbye. Click Erase iPhone again.
Check again that your iPhone is gone forever
Go to your Apple ID Account Management page and scroll down a bit until you see Devices. Your iPhone shouldn’t be on this list. If so, click on it and select “Remove from Account.”
Turn off your old iPhone and send it back to Apple.
This speaks for itself, but make sure you turn off your old iPhone. Next, open the return box that Apple sent you and follow its instructions to mail your iPhone back. Try not to think too much about the huge bags of cash – in the form of refunds or Apple balance – heading towards you.