My old #Nokia #Lumia 820 has failed on me and I have had to change phones. For the first time EVER I have had to upgrade to the same phone I had before.
Now, #Windows phone has a lot of good things. Some of them include SMS back up, settings back up, #OneDrive, etc.
In an ideal world, you would simply buy your new phone, enter your Windows Live / Hotmail ID and the phone would whizz and burr as it gets all your settings and turns your new phone into the same state your old one was.
This doesn't quite work, well, not really…
Depending on your phone software patch level leaving the factory you may or may not be prompted to restore from a back up. Secondly, there is a bug on the SMS storage which means that your SMS messages might come through as “Surname, +phoneNumber”, finally, the settings come through, broadly, but things like tile position etc are not included.
If and when you do get the back up on your phone the phone then downloads ALL apps you might have used on the phone, it doesn't know which ones you have bought but don't use. This means you have to uninstall all the stuff you no longer want. Even when they are installed, you might find that some fail because of the patch level on your phone…
ADVICE…
When you get your new phone enter your Windows Live ID and then let the phone do what it wants to do, use a back up if you can. If that option isn't available search for a software update, install it, and then search again, and again, and again, until there are no more updates.
I HAD TO PATCH MY PHONE FOUR TIMES TO BRING IT UP TO THE RIGHT LEVEL
With that done, delete everything off of your phone and start again. If you DIDNT get a restore from back up request the first time round, you will this time (assuming you use that feature). Apps et al will now install. SOME of them may not work because of the #NOKIA patch version, not the Windows patch version.
Here is a handy link to get your phone #NOKIA patch versions up to where they should be:
http://discussions.nokia.com/t5/Pool-of-Knowledge/Nokia-Windows-Phone-8-App-Updates/td-p/1640082
Because the Nokia installs are really Apps and they already exist on the phone, you merely have to upgrade them to the latest version. A bit of a mess in my view.
After the Nokia update has been done, and the phone is Microsoft patched, and the apps are all installed, you are ready to go.
The only final problem you might see is the SMS problem of “Surname, +phoneNumber” (if you have your contacts on your phone you may well see “Surname, Surname First name”. I dont have a way to fix this…
This might only be a problem for people with linked inboxes, or linked contacts, or people you have used backup from the start, or people you order there contacts Surname, First Name in the People Hub, or people who have multiple email accounts with the same contact details on their phone. I dont know.
Hopefully it will get fixed soon… (although its been a bug for at least a year and a half!)