How do I set up a new phone when the old one is broken or lost?
The transfer routes that need the old phone are closed, so you rebuild from the cloud backup and re-establish your second factor. Do the account recovery first.
- Difficulty
- intermediate
- Time
- 1 hr
- Read
- 5 min
- Safety
- caution
Short answer
Set the new phone up from your cloud backup rather than a device-to-device transfer, since the direct routes need a working old phone. Before anything else, work out how you will get back into your accounts without the old handset: get the SIM or eSIM onto the new phone so you can receive texts, then use each service's recovery route for two-factor codes. Expect to spend most of the time on accounts, not on the phone.
There are three routes onto a new phone: a direct device-to-device transfer, a restore from a cloud backup, and a manual rebuild. The first is the best and needs a working old phone. When the old phone is gone, you are choosing between the second and third, and your position depends entirely on decisions you made months ago about what was backing up.
Safety
Step by step
- Try harder than you think to revive the old phone.A phone with a broken screen may still work with a USB-C to HDMI adapter and a mouse, or by touch memory if you know the pattern. A phone that will not turn on may respond to a long hard-reset button hold, or to an hour on a known-good charger. A repair shop can often read data off a phone it cannot economically repair. All of this is worth an afternoon before you accept the loss.
- Get your phone number onto the new phone first.Move the physical SIM across, or ask the network to reissue the eSIM — most now do this through their app or website in minutes, and it is free. Your number is the recovery route for most of your accounts, so nothing else works smoothly until this is done.
- Sort out two-factor access before you need it.If your codes lived in an authenticator on the lost phone, you cannot restore them. Use each service's backup codes if you saved them, or its account-recovery process, which typically involves identity checks and a waiting period. Start the slow ones — banks, work accounts, government services — first, because they take days.
- Set the new phone up and choose restore from cloud backup.During setup, sign into the same account and select the most recent device backup. Check its date carefully; the backup list shows when each was taken, and a phone that stopped backing up months ago will restore you to months ago.
- Let the photo library download properly.If your photos were syncing, they come back from the cloud rather than from the backup, and that download takes time and space. Leave the phone on wi-fi and charging. If they were not syncing, the photos were only on the broken phone and recovering the phone becomes much more important.
- Reinstall the apps the backup could not carry.Banking, authentication and some security apps exclude themselves from backups by design. Each needs a fresh install and a fresh sign-in, often with an identity check because you are on a new device.
- Accept where the gaps are permanent.WhatsApp history restores only from its own cloud backup, so if that was off, the history was on the broken phone. Local notes, offline saves and anything an app kept only on the device are in the same position. Knowing which of these you have lost lets you stop searching.
- Fix the thing that made this painful.Before you move on: turn the device backup on and verify it runs, turn on the messaging app's own backup, and put your authenticator's recovery codes somewhere that is not a phone. This whole episode is preventable and takes about fifteen minutes to prevent.
If it doesn't work
No backup is offered during setup
Cause: Backups were never enabled, or the phone was signed into a different account — Fix: Check the account first — signing in with a different address of your own is common. If backups genuinely were off, you are on the manual rebuild route: reinstall apps by hand and recover what lives on servers.
The only backup offered is very old
Cause: Backups stopped when the cloud account filled up, or the phone stopped being plugged in overnight — Fix: Restore it anyway — an old backup beats none, and it brings settings and app layout back. Then treat the gap between the backup date and the loss as a manual rebuild.
Locked out of accounts because the codes were on the lost phone
Cause: No backup codes and no second recovery method — Fix: Work through each service's account-recovery flow. Doing it from a device and network the service recognises helps. Expect delays on financial and government accounts, and expect to prove identity.
The phone is asking for the previous device's lock code to unlock it
Cause: Activation lock — the anti-theft feature tying the device to its owner's account — Fix: Sign in with the same account the phone was set up with. If it was a second-hand phone and the previous owner did not remove it from their account, nobody can bypass this and you need the seller to release it.
Questions people ask
Should I claim on insurance before or after setting up the new phone?
Report the loss to the insurer and the network promptly — networks bar a lost handset by its IMEI, and insurers usually require a report within a short window. You can set up a replacement in parallel; the two processes do not conflict.
Is a device-to-device transfer really impossible with a broken screen?
Not always. If the phone powers on and the screen is only cracked rather than dead, the transfer will run. If the display is black but the phone is alive, an adapter to a monitor plus a USB mouse turns it into a usable computer for long enough to run the transfer.
What if the phone was stolen rather than broken?
Treat it as an account-security incident as well as a device loss: mark it lost in your account so it can be wiped remotely, change the passwords for anything that was signed in, and tell your bank if payment cards were in the wallet.
Can a repair shop get my photos off a dead phone?
Sometimes, and it depends on why it is dead. A failed screen or charging port is usually recoverable. Water damage and a failed mainboard often are not, and specialist data recovery for phones is expensive because the storage is encrypted and soldered down.