Mary Lett - A Simple Guide to Verizon iPhone 4

Congratulations! You have purchased the new Verizon iPhone 4, one of the most anticipated products in some time. What are the key things that you need to do prior to activating and properly setting up your new iPhone?

The biggest issue with acquiring a new phone is transferring important information from your old phone to the new one. In this chapter, we cover the best ways to preserve your current contact information, music, videos, and other important data that you want to save.

Additionally, we give those of you who already have an iPhone some information on how to change to a Verizon iPhone.

Four Key Steps to Take Prior to Activating Your iPhone

Here are the four key steps that you should take prior to turning on your new phone:

Archiving your current voice mail

Downloading Apple iTunes

Preparing to transfer your contacts

Transferring your pictures, videos, music, and documents from your current phone

Archiving Your Current Voice Mail

After your new iPhone is activated, your current voice mail will be deleted unless you subscribe to Visual Voice Mail, which is a service that Verizon Wireless provides for $2.99 per month. Contact Verizon Wireless to add this service to your contract. If you have Visual Voice Mail, complete the following steps to archive your current voice mail:

Click Message under the Visual Voice Mail program.

Click Options.

Click Save a copy/Archive.

Click Save to SD Card or External Memory.

If you do not subscribe to Visual Voice Mail, you will need to write down any voice mail messages that you want to keep.

Downloading iTunes

One of the most important steps in setting up your new iPhone is going to the Apple iTunes website and downloading the Apple iTunes application. You cannot turn on your new iPhone until you have this program. You use this program to download and manage your data and applications between your iPhone and your computer. Without it, you cannot download apps (you learn how to get and use apps in Chapter 4), music, movies, or podcasts or have the ability to ping. iTunes will become the lifeblood of your new iPhone, enabling you to do all of the great things that you have been looking forward to doing.

To download the Apple iTunes application, go to www.apple.com/itunes/download/ . At this site, complete the following steps:

Click the download icon to begin downloading.

Figure 1-1: Apple iTunes Download Page

Click Yes to accept the terms of Apples licensing agreement in order to continue with the download.

Click Yes to save the file to your computer.

The download itself takes about 5 minutes, depending on the speed of your Internet connection.

After downloading and installing iTunes, you need to set up an Apple Store account:

At www.apple.com/itunes , click the Store menu on the top left side of the iTunes window and then click Create Account.

Figure 1-2: Apple iTunes Create Account Menu

Click Continue at the bottom right side of the screen.

Fill in the form with your e-mail address, password, password question, and birth date.

Click Continue to go to the next screen.

Fill in the next form with your credit card information and mailing address.

Click Continue to go to the next screen. You will get a message telling you that you will receive an e-mail to complete the registration process.

When you receive the e-mail, click on Verify Now to complete the registration process.

Dear Your Name,
You've entered email address> as the contact email address for your Apple ID. To complete the process, we just need to verify that this email address belongs to you. Simply click the link below and sign in using your Apple ID and password.
Verify Now >
Wondering why you got this email?
It's sent when someone adds or changes a contact email address for an Apple ID account. If you didn't do this, don't worry. Your email address cannot be used as a contact address for an Apple ID without your verification.
For more information, see our frequently asked questions .
Thanks,
Apple Customer Support

Figure 1-3: Apple Verify E-Mail Address

Next, fill in your login name (e-mail address) and password.

Your registration is now complete. You can go to the iTunes store and purchase apps (see Chapter 4) or music.

After setting up your Apple Store account, you may also want to go to the iTunes page and review the short tutorials on how to use the various iTunes features. Each of these tutorials lasts one to three minutes and provides a great way to get up to speed quickly with the various aspects of iTunes.

Transferring Your Contacts

The next important step in preparing to use your new iPhone is transferring your existing contact data. Taking care to transfer your data properly will help you avoid spending a lot of extra time re-entering contacts later.

Verizon offers a program called Backup Assistant to help you back up and transfer your existing contacts. You can download this program to your current phone in order to back up the contacts you already have. Then you can install Backup Assistant on your new iPhone to transfer your contacts to the new phone. If you are currently using a Windows phone, you can download the Windows Device Backup Program to transfer your contacts to Outlook.