You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

📰 Newsroom Update

Billie Eilish is Apple Music’s Artist of the Year for 2024. Learn more >

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

User profile for user: beagle79
beagle79 Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Can iTunes 12.9.4.104 back up an iPhone 4s that's running iOS 5?

I'm giving an iPhone SE to a friend who currently has an iPhone 4S. The SE has been updated to iOS 12.2. As far as I know, the 4S has never been updated and is running the iOS version it shipped with (version 5?).


I would like to use iTunes to back up the data on the 4S and restore it to the SE. I have iTunes 12.9.4.104 running on Windows 10. My question is about backward compatibility. Can the current version of iTunes back up a device running such an old version of iOS?


I can't be 100% certain about which iOS version is installed on the 4S because my friend lives out of town and I won't have my hands on the phone for another week. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I don't have an iCloud account so that's not an option for me.


iPhone 4S

Posted on May 6, 2019 11:47 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply
User profile for user: turingtest2
turingtest2
User level: Level 10
274,564 points

Posted on May 7, 2019 3:10 AM

In principle iTunes can back up all versions of iOS that were released up until the point that version of iTunes was released. In principle an iOS device backup can be restored to any compatible device running the same or better version of iOS as that which was backed up. How this works in practice with such a large jump might be a different matter.


tt2

View in context

Similar questions

3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply
User profile for user: turingtest2
turingtest2
User level: Level 10
274,564 points

May 7, 2019 3:10 AM in response to beagle79

In principle iTunes can back up all versions of iOS that were released up until the point that version of iTunes was released. In principle an iOS device backup can be restored to any compatible device running the same or better version of iOS as that which was backed up. How this works in practice with such a large jump might be a different matter.


tt2

Reply

Can iTunes 12.9.4.104 back up an iPhone 4s that's running iOS 5?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.
Learn more Sign up