iPad Bought new iPad mini 5

[OtinG]

I bought a refurbished iPad mini 5 with 64GB.

I like it and I’m glad I bought it. I had a mini 2 previously, and currently have the 2016 iPad Pro 9.7” with 32GB.

Prior to receiving the mini 5 I made iCloud backups of my Pro 9.7 after deleting most of the emails and several old apps I seldom used. I left about 12 already read emailS on the Pro 9.7. After receiving the mini 5 I set it up then chose to restore the Pro 9.7 latest backup. That is a lot easier than adding all the apps and data manually, then having to reconfigure the settings to taste.

So far the restore from iCloud backup appears to have gone fairly well. Despite the clunky wording by Apple, this option is more appropriately a cloning of the Pro 9.7 settings, apps, and data onto the new mini 5. The actual cloning only took a few minutes and went through without a hitch. Everything seemed to make it onto the mini 5. Afterwards it takes longer to actually bring over all the data, so I’ve kept it plugged into a charger. After 12 hours it seems to be still bringing over some data as it shows that an initial backup has not yet been executed due to the restoration still taking place.

The one odd thing was that the cloning process brought over hundreds of emails that should have long been deleted from the Pro 9.7. Not sure why, but really clunky. All these were marked unread. Every time I would select all but the 12 I wanted to keep and delete the rest, more would appear! Friggin stupid on Apple’s part, and it took a solid half hour before it finally stopped resurrecting long since deleted emails. BTW, all those emails had long since been sent to the Trash on the Pro 9.7, then the Trash had been deleted. Leave it to Apple to find a way to bleep that up. The process of getting rid of all those long gone but resurrected emails from hell was lengthy, annoying, and aggravating! I finally got it done though.

If you are planning on using iCloud to clone an old iThingie to a new one, you might want to research this issue before hand to make sure that the old emails you buried stay in the darn grave!

Other than that issue, everything seems to be working well. BTW, last year I bought a new iPhone XR and used this iCloud cloning method to clone my old iPhone 7 onto it, and that worked without any issues. Of course that was pre-iOS 13, which seems to still have quite a few bugs.

[OtinG]

After 18 hours of recovering data, more accurately called cloning, I gave up on the darn thing ever finishing. As far as I can tell all of the settings and all of the apps have loaded correctly, and did so in the first few minutes of the process. As for the data, it looks like most of it also loaded, so not sure what it was stuck on, if anything. Probably just more crappy programming by Apple. At any rate, I stopped the recovery, then did a manual backup. I’m pretty sure everything important loaded and it was likely just held up by data for some app, probably one I rarely use. Everything looks fine, so no big deal I guess.

I have noticed that my 5G WiFi connection only registers about half the download speed that my iPhone XR and Pro 9.7 do. They both register about 220 Mbips but the mini 5 only about 105 Mbips. I think someone else posted a few months ago about a similar issue. Perhaps Apple got cheap on the WiFi radio. I’m a little annoyed at the half speed, but 105 Mbips is still pretty good.

The iCloud speed seems rather slow, but I guess that might have more to do with so many people being at home and pushing the servers pretty hard.

I still have no clue where all those long dead emails were stored, nor why they were stored rather than deleted, nor why they kept reappearing during the cloning. Extremely annoying, but then Apple Mail has always been rather crappy.

Other than those relatively minor issues, I’m happy with the iPad mini 5. Definitely a very nice upgrade to the four year old iPad Pro 9.7.

[ilovejedd]

Apple Mail does have its share of bugs particularly on iOS 13. Personally, it was working OK for me on iOS 10 but became problematic starting with iOS 11 or 12, iirc.

That said, depending on the setup, some email may not actually be backed up to iCloud/iTunes. Gmail for example just re-downloads directly from Google's servers.

I use Gmail and I've noticed Apple's Mail app doesn't always sync changes to Gmail's IMAP servers (or at least it doesn't do so in real time) so I only use it for reading email and not organizing.

Thankfully, Gmail on iPadOS Safari gets the Gmail desktop website version now and is more or less functionaly. That's what I use when I need to clean up my email.

Mind, it's really more of a restore than a straight up clone. For example, Dropbox free version now limits you to three devices. If you clone a PC HDD, the clone still counts as one device. If you restore from iCloud backup, Dropbox counts it as a different device.

[OtinG]

I now have a GoDaddy POP3 email account and that might be the issue. I call it “GoCrappy” though! I had an IMAP account with them for years but got tired of paying over a $100/year. Since I’ve got web hosting through them I get a free POP3 account. This morning I went to the GoDaddy account and deleted all the emails that I didn’t want to keep. I think maybe iCloud does like some backup apps and merely adds new information overtime. It probably didn’t properly flag the deleted emails as deleted.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by OtinG

I now have a GoDaddy POP3 email account and that might be the issue. I call it “GoCrappy” though! I had an IMAP account with them for years but got tired of paying over a $100/year. Since I’ve got web hosting through them I get a free POP3 account. This morning I went to the GoDaddy account and deleted all the emails that I didn’t want to keep. I think maybe iCloud does like some backup apps and merely adds new information overtime. It probably didn’t properly flag the deleted emails as deleted.

Unlike IMAP, POP3 doesn't auto delete from the server, or at least that's what I've run across. I actually prefer that it not be deleted at the server, but you can set that flag when you set up the account in mail.

Mail seems to be the most frustrating thing about setting up new devices, at least it is for me.

I'm glad you like your new iPad Mini 5. It's certainly a big jump up from the iPad Mini 2!

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Unlike IMAP, POP3 doesn't auto delete from the server, or at least that's what I've run across. I actually prefer that it not be deleted at the server, but you can set that flag when you set up the account in mail.

Mail seems to be the most frustrating thing about setting up new devices, at least it is for me.

I'm glad you like your new iPad Mini 5. It's certainly a big jump up from the iPad Mini 2!

You are correct in that Mail won’t delete emails from my GoDaddy POP3 account. I have to periodically use the GoDaddy login to delete them via my GoDaddy account. A PITA. Mail does nothing more than download new emails from this account, and it doesn’t do that very well across my various devices. With the IMAP account I could delete email on one device and Mail would delete it across all the devices connected to that account, but POP3 accounts don’t have that ability. However, I’m a bit annoyed that emails which I manually delete from any device don’t seem to always get deleted, perhaps because they were backed up on iCloud before the deletion. Thankfully this only seems to be an annoyance when I try to set up a new device from the backup of a previous device. I’m guessing that any emails that were backed up somehow stay in the iCloud backup and during a recovery they get pushed back onto the device. Apple should flag deleted emails for deletion from subsequent backups, but apparently they don’t.

Yes the mini 5 is a major upgrade from the old mini 2! It is even a substantial upgrade from my Pro 9.7. It has 50% more internal RAM than the Pro 9.7, and a significantly faster processor too, not to mention twice as much storage memory. I’m very impressed with it considering its lower price point.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by OtinG

You are correct in that Mail won’t delete emails from my GoDaddy POP3 account. I have to periodically use the GoDaddy login to delete them via my GoDaddy account. A PITA. Mail does nothing more than download new emails from this account, and it doesn’t do that very well across my various devices. With the IMAP account I could delete email on one device and Mail would delete it across all the devices connected to that account, but POP3 accounts don’t have that ability. However, I’m a bit annoyed that emails which I manually delete from any device don’t seem to always get deleted, perhaps because they were backed up on iCloud before the deletion. Thankfully this only seems to be an annoyance when I try to set up a new device from the backup of a previous device. I’m guessing that any emails that were backed up somehow stay in the iCloud backup and during a recovery they get pushed back onto the device. Apple should flag deleted emails for deletion from subsequent backups, but apparently they don’t.

I suspect in this case, the mini 5 is just re-downloading everything within the last x days from your GoDaddy account because it doesn't know you already deleted those emails on your Pro 9.7.

I've got the Mail app set up for Manual Fetch so it only starts downloading emails when I actually open the Mail app. At least for Gmail (IMAP), my email list is always empty when I first open the Mail app after an iCloud or iTunes restore.

You can go here to see the size of app data backups and even choose which apps should be backed up to iCloud or not:
Settings -> Apple ID -> iCloud -> Manage Storage -> Backups -> This Device

I expect the mini 5 will serve you very well for years to come but just in case you need to do a restore in future, probably best to delete the email directly via GoDaddy before doing a restore so your new device doesn't re-download emails deleted using other devices.

[OtinG]

Life was definitely much simpler as far as email goes when I had my IMAP account! But that cost me over $100/year and had a lot of controls and settings. The POP3 accounts are free at GoDaddy if you have web hosting through them, but they have almost no controls and few settings. As they say, you get what you pay for! I did a few restores for new iThingies during the IMAP days, and I think those went well as far as email goes. This was the first restore for a new device after switching to POP3, so I agree it would be better to take care of the old archived emails via GoDaddy itself prior to doing restore. Lessen learned.

Don’t Forget to Tell Your iPhone to Forward SMS Text Messages to a New iPad

BTW, since I rarely buy new iThingies due to being retired and having to watch my spending more than when I was still working, I typically go a few years between new devices. When you get older your brain tends to forget about the fine details more so than when you were a young pup! It is always interesting to do one of these restore (setting up new) device procedures as invariably I will forget about at least one detail from the last one I did, then have to spend time trying to trace down what the heck went wrong. Here is one of those things that went wrong this time, and I hope it might help to remind those of us who get forgetful sometimes of this thing we have to do to get Messages to work with a new iPad that doesn't have a cellular radio.

After setting up my new iPad mini 5, I soon learned that using it to send SMS text messages to friends was not working. My new mini 5 is WiFi only, no cellular radio. iPads have an app called iMessage (now just Message) that sends Apple's proprietary messages between other iThingies, but if you want to send/receive traditional SMS text messages with Android (or other non-Apple) devices, it won't do that without some tweaking. Restoring a new device won’t necessarily result in your new device working with SMS text messaging. Restoring an existing device from a backup probably will work, assuming it did when the backup was made, but only if you don't change the name of the device.

When I set up my new mini 5, I restored the latest backup I had made for my Pro. My Pro was named Jack's iPad Pro 9.7. I keep the names simple and descriptive so it is easy to know which device it refers to. Immediately after finishing the set up and restore on my new mini 5, I changed its name to Jack's miniPad5. Therein lies the reason that SMS text messaging wouldn't work. I forgot that to set up SMS text messaging on an iPad without cellular radio (and phone service) requires an iPhone with phone service and it also requires that you go into the iPhone's settings and specifically tell the iPhone to share its phone service with the iPad. It took me a while to figure out that I had to go to my iPhone XR, and do this:

Settings-->Messages-->Text Message Forwarding--> and turn on the toggle switch for Jack's miniPad5.

Otherwise the iPhone will have no idea that there is a new iPad and you want to forward SMS text messages to it.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by OtinG

When I set up my new mini 5, I restored the latest backup I had made for my Pro. My Pro was named Jack's iPad Pro 9.7. I keep the names simple and descriptive so it is easy to know which device it refers to. Immediately after finishing the set up and restore on my new mini 5, I changed its name to Jack's miniPad5. Therein lies the reason that SMS text messaging wouldn't work. I forgot that to set up SMS text messaging on an iPad without cellular radio (and phone service) requires an iPhone with phone service and it also requires that you go into the iPhone's settings and specifically tell the iPhone to share its phone service with the iPad. It took me a while to figure out that I had to go to my iPhone XR, and do this:

Settings-->Messages-->Text Message Forwarding--> and turn on the toggle switch for Jack's miniPad5.

Otherwise the iPhone will have no idea that there is a new iPad and you want to forward SMS text messages to it.

Tip: It's the same behavior for cellular iPads. Unlike Android, Apple doesn't allow direct texting to a cellular iPad's phone number.

You need to manually enable SMS forwarding for all new iPads linked to your account. Doesn't matter if you change the iPad name or not. SMS forwarding needs to be enabled for each device. Lol, I actually have a couple of iPads simply named "iPad" so there are two "iPad (iPad)" in my text message forwarding list.

[OtinG]

LOL! I’ve owned Kindles since 2007, and I’ve downloaded dozens of the Kindle apps on more computers and devices than I could ever enumerate. I used to just let Amazon assign a name for each of them. Then one day I needed to find a specific one on my Kindle Devices web page at Amazon. Holy cow, that took a while as I had to click on each one and read the information about it to determine which device it was or was installed on. I then spent a long time deleting the obsolete ones, and renaming the ones I still had to a name that quickly identified it as a specific model or as installed on a specific device. I learned my lesson about being lazy with naming schemes!

[svenlind]

Otherwise the iPhone will have no idea that there is a new iPad and you want to forward SMS text messages to it.

Thank you very much for this info. I can now use all my iPads to send/receive text messages.
I too had forgotten.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by svenlind

Thank you very much for this info. I can now use all my iPads to send/receive text messages.
I too had forgotten.

[OtinG]

BTW, I rebooted my WiFi router this morning and now my iPad mini 5 has the full download speed that my Pro and iPhone XR have. I’ve noticed this anomaly before. Periodically my MacBook Pro with ethernet connection Slows way down in download speed but the Mac Mini with ethernet connection stays fast. A reboot of the router usually fixes that issue too.

[Deskisamess]

Renewing the lease on the WiFi can sometimes fix a sluggish connection on an iDevice.

Settings...WiFi...tap the "i" in the circle next to the connection you're using, then select Renew Lease

I'll do this is my iPad Pro is sluggish while my husband's iPad connection is fine.

We do try to reboot the whole network every week or two, starting with the modem.

[HLS]

I had the 5 in 64gb. It was not enough storage so i had to sell it. My music and ebooks are about 80GB