Can I just swap SIMs?

[donawalt]

I have an iPhone 5s that was formerly on AT&T, that I have reset once I moved to an iPhone 6. The iPhone 5s still has its SIM.

My daughter has an iPhone 5 also on AT&T.

She wants the 5s - can I just take out her SIM, put it in the 5s, and restore her latest backup to the 5s? Or do I have to call AT&T for an activation?

Thanks!

 

[BreakingKayfabe]

Yup, you sure can.

Once it's restored just make sure she goes into settings - messages to make sure iMessage is activated.

 

[donawalt]

Thank you!

 

[donawalt]

Sorry for the one last follow up question, as I am now thinking I will do this differently.
In the past, I reset the phone, then when it was time to give to a relative, I turned it on to the Hello/Hola screen, and started it up and did all the steps at once inclluding restore from iTunes or iCloud.

I actually turned the phone on again yesterday though, and WITHOUT signing in to anything, brought it up - because I wanted to save the time of updating to the newest version of iOS. So now it's now in a generic state on WiFi but no cell phone carrier or iCloud.

Will this work, or should I just reset the phone again and do as I have in the past? --->

1. Backup old iPhone 5 (new phone is iPhone 5s) to iCloud
2. Take SIM from old phone, put in new phone
3. Turn on new phone - should see AT&T service now working
4. Sign on to iCloud on new phone
5. Restore backup from iCloud on new phone

Will this work?

 

[wenrob]

Not sure I understand the first part of your follow up question but the steps you listed in the second part is exactly how you should do it.

 

[donawalt]

Thanks wenrob, what I wasn't too clear on, is in the proposed second part, the phone is already setup and running on iOS 8.x, the latest; but not signed on to anything. In the first part, it's like a brand new phone out of the box, saying "Hello" - I always did the restore of a backup as part of working through th steps after Hello, instead of restoring a backup to a running phone. Is that clearer?

 

[BreakingKayfabe]

You can only restore a backup of a running phone using iTunes.

The iCloud restore has to be in the setup process, otherwise you'd just be starting as new.

 

[donawalt]

Ah ok, thanks Heisenberg!