You are overthinking it. Switching to a new iPhone is something I’ve done half a dozen times and the best route is to make sure your old phone is backed up to iCloud, then restore the backup on the new phone. Note that this backup is not a file system image. It is pretty clean. If you were moving to a new Windows computer and you wanted to start fresh — heck yes. But for an iPhone, which will redownload all your apps from the App Store anyway, it’s not necessary. Restoring from iCloud backup is a huge timesaver and there is, in my experience, no benefit to not using it. Enjoy your new iPhone!

Yeah I do that. There's no like, lag difference, the crap I get rid of is apps I don't use and have forgotten about.

I don't install any app until I need it, with this restart. That way any app that gets on my new phone is there for a reason.

Once in a while I do this to my current phone, too. Works great, I've done it like a dozen times.

I always use the iPhone to iPhone auto transfer. I also don’t have a bloated phone or unused apps. I want everything from phone A going to phone B.

I do this whenever I get a new iPhone. Backup the old phones and include all the apps to be safe. I set up my new phone as new and start using it and download apps when I need it. So I go from 150+ apps to only the default ones so it eliminates any app I barely used on my old phone. I carry my old phone with me for a few days just in case I need to access some app immediately but if you have unlimited data you wouldn’t need to do that.

You can have some apps and settings on iCloud which will get carried over - like Health, Fitness, Passwords etc.

They are some settings which don’t get carried over, like the mail app defaults to Archive on swipe and I need to change to Trash. You’ll anyway figure it out if you are used to one setting. If it’s not usable you can always install the backup. So far I don’t mind starting fresh.

I did that with mine. Just make sure you keep your iPhone X for a bit while setting up the new one for apps that require validation like 2 factor authentication. The big ones for me were Google Authenticator, Steam app, and my bank.

Bit of an aside, but my wife needed a new phone and couldn't wait until now, so she got an iPhone 14 Pro. She had backed up her old phone to iCloud and it was updated to the latest version of iOS 16. Setting up the new iPhone from iCloud was an absolutely hellish experience. For whatever reason, the new phone would refuse to install the newest point release of iOS 16, so whenever it would try to restore from iCloud backup it couldn't because the backup was created with a newer iOS version. I had to wipe the new phone and restart the restore process 4 times before it finally completed the iOS update and could restore the backup. And one of those times it started to install the software update but just froze after about an hour. Even after it restored from backup, it took another hour for everything (texts, photos, emails) to sync over. I've never before experienced this with an iPhone.

If I didn't get a new phone every year I would likely not load a backup. It takes a bit more time when you just "sign in to icloud" and then go from there, but the phone feels a lot more "new". Loading my old backup on a new phone just has too much familiarity in the way of app arrangement and whatnot.

As with any new phone, ensure all of your core apps work before resetting the old one. Often 2FA and stuff can get you in a catch 22 if you are not careful.

The answers here are making me wonder if I should do the same - what are the downsides? Having to look up every single username and password for example?