How Do I Port My Iphone to a New Phone?

For many years, Apple has been a recognized leader in the telecommunications industry due to its quality products and responsive customer support services. The company works hard to maintain a good standing reputation among its customers. Gethuman has created this guide to help individuals who need to port their iPhones to new phones by providing a step by step guide for the whole process. This guide also contains information on how you can backup your data before beginning the porting process on iTunes.

Adam Goldkamp is the editor / author responsible for this content.
Dec 9, 2022

Number porting is the process of taking an existing phone number and changing it to a different telecommunications service provider or a new phone. There are two types of number porting: full-scale number porting and local number porting, abbreviated as LNP. Full mobile number porting refers to the process of changing your number to a completely different service provider, thereby improving your service plans or moving your service to a different location. On the other hand, local number porting refers to the transfer of cell phone numbers related to fixed lines.

Number porting is often confused with call forwarding, which entails redirecting calls to another number registered as the existing number. The number remains the same for call forwarding, while the porting process could change the number.

If you're wondering how you can port your iPhone to a new phone, here are a few guidelines to point you in the right direction throughout the process.

How do I port my iPhone to a new phone?

You can leverage the detailed steps below if you want to transfer your iPhone to a new phone.

  • Ensure you've powered off your iPhone before removing the SIM card.
  • Locate the SIM tray on your iPhone. The majority of iPhones have it on the right side of the phone.
  • Use the pre-packaged SIM extraction tool to open the SIM tray. The extraction tool has a sharp ending that comfortably fits in the pinhole of the SIM tray. If yours is lost, a safety pin or paperclip may work just fine.
  • Press down on the SIM extraction tool to eject the SIM tray along with the SIM card.
  • Eject the new phone's SIM tray using either a SIM extraction tool, pin, or paperclip.
  • Use your fingers to remove the SIM card from your iPhone's SIM tray or turn over the tray to remove the SIM card.
  • Place the SIM card into the SIM slot of your new phone. While doing this, align the SIM card's notched corner with the SIM card tray holder's notched corner. The golden-chipped side should face down.
  • Having placed the SIM card in your new phone, you can power it up to continue using your new phone with the information and mobile number contained in your SIM card.

As aforementioned, for the porting process to begin, you may need to backup your iPhone data. Here's how to go about the backup process on iTunes, Finder, or iCloud. To backup your data on iTunes;

  • Connect your iPhone to your Mac or personal computer.
  • Open the iTunes application.
  • You might need to unlock your iPhone before accessing it via iTunes.
  • A warning message may appear reading, "Do you want to allow this computer to access information on your iPhone?"
  • Select continue and provide the passcode when requested to do so.
  • At times, a software update may be needed for your Mac computer or PC. In that case, click "Install."
  • Once that's done, iTunes should show your phone in the Devices section, located in the column on your right side.
  • You may also observe an iPhone icon beside the music drop-down menu.
  • Select the icon.
  • This will bring out a section labeled Backups along with detailed information about your iPhone.
  • While here, you can also choose to back up data to This Computer.
  • Select "Backup Now" to make that happen.

Alternatively;

The iPhone's customer support desk representatives strive always to provide timely and effective responses to queries related to the porting of iPhones to new phones. Therefore, feel free to contact them whenever you're having trouble with the process.

Further questions?

Ask a followup or related question and we will try to provide an answer in seconds.
Adam has been tirelessly trying to help customers find the best tips and tricks to get through phone trees and writing many guides for prickly customer service problems. He's been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Inside Edition and Bloomberg.
How Do I Port My Iphone to a New Phone?

Help from Real People

We partner with a US-based company with live tech support experts available 24/7. Take advantage of a $5 one-week trial membership and chat with an expert now.
Chat with an expert

Why does GetHuman Write How-to Guides for Apple Problems?

GetHuman has been working for over 10 years on sourcing information about big organizations like Apple in order to help customers resolve customer service issues faster. We started with contact information and fastest ways to reach a human at big companies. Particularly ones with slow or complicated IVR or phone menu systems. Or companies that have self-serve help forums instead of a customer service department. From there, we realized that consumers still needed more detailed help solving the most common problems, so we expanded to this set of guides, which grows every day. And if you spot any issues with our How Do I Port My Iphone to a New Phone? guide, please let us know by sending us feedback. We want to be as helpful as possible. If you appreciated this guide, please share it with your favorite people. Our free information and tools is powered by you, the customer. The more people that use it, the better it gets.

Apple

Asked 4 years ago
Updated 2 years ago
Viewed 938,863 times
Apple
transfer iphone
Porting iPhone to new phone

Speak to An Expert Now

We partner with a US-based expert help site to provide you with tech support 24/7. Enjoy a $5 one-week trial membership and chat with a live expert now.
Get Live Expert Help
Was this page helpful?YesNeeds work
Sharing is what powers GetHuman's free customer service contact information and tools. You can help!