3G

So you're a proud owner of a new iPhone 4 - maybe you were even in the same line I just stood in to get mine this morning.

But now you realize you have a considerable investment in apps and music sitting on your old iPhone 3G or 3GS, and don't know how to transfer them over to your new iPhone.

The trick is to first backup your old phone to iTunes, and then you can restore this backup to your new iPhone, which will transfer everything over.

Here's how to transfer purchased apps and songs from your iPhone 3G/3GS to your new iPhone 4 in 5 easy steps:

1. Connect your old iPhone to your computer and open iTunes.

2. Transfer your purchases by right-clicking your iPhone in iTunes and selecting "Transfer Purchases" from the shortcut menu.

You'll see iTunes transferring your apps and songs from your old iPhone to your computer:

3. Backup your old iPhone.

Right-click on your iPhone again in iTunes and select "Back Up" from the shortcut menu.

4. Connect your new iPhone 4 (after disconnecting the old one of course).

5. Restore your iPhone 4 using the old iPhone's backup.

Right-click again on your iPhone 4 in iTunes and select "Restore from Backup".

Choose the backup you created in the 3rd step above:

Click "Restore" and wait for iTunes to restore from the backup (which also transfers over your purchased apps and music):

Sprint caps their 3G data plans at 2 GB a month, but 4G connectivity is unlimited and way faster too. Even at a low 20% signal strength I can watch a streaming Netflix movie with no pauses or frame drops, and without having to worry about exceeding the 2 GB limit that Sprint places on 3G connectivity.

The trick is to ensure that you're only connecting to the 4G network, which is one of the settings that can be easily configured on the Sprint Overdrive.

Here's how to force your Sprint Overdrive to only connect at 4G speed:

1. Open the Overdrive's admin console

The admin console for the Sprint Overdrive 3G/4G is a web page located at http://192.168.0.1. You can open this link in a web browser from any device that's connected to the Overdrive's wifi network, including your mobile phone if it has a web browser.

2. Log in as Admin

Enter your admin password and click OK to access the Overdrive's setup screens.

Hopefully you wrote the password down somewhere when you first configured your Overdrive, or you can also find it in the original contract you received from Sprint (which they also sent to my email address).

3. Set WAN Mode to "4G only"

Click the "WAN" tab in the admin console, and choose the "4G only" option from the WAN Mode dropdown.

I found that selecting "4G Preferred" doesn't connect at 4G very often, and tends to stay connected at 3G even when a 4G connection is available. For example, the Overdrive was able to find a 4G network right away when I changed to "4G only", even though it was running on 3G before I made the change.

Your new iPhone has arrived, and you're probably having a blast checking out the new features and showing it off to your friends.

You're also probably wondering how to copy everything from the old iPhone to the shiny new one - apps you've purchased, music, photos, contacts, email, notes - the whole enchilada.

Here are the steps I took to transfer everything from my old iPhone to my new one, by backing up my old iphone and then restoring the new iPhone from the backup. These same steps can be followed to fully backup an iPhone (and you might realize after reading this article that the backups you've been doing have not been fully backing up your purchased apps).

1. Backup the old iPhone

Connect your iPhone to your computer with the USB data cable and open iTunes. Wait for it to recognize your iPhone, and then right-click on your iPhone in the left side bar. Select "Backup" from the short-cut menu to start the backup.

The first backup took about 20 minutes on my iPhone, which was loaded with about 4 GB of data. I say first, because I ended up having to do it again because the first run didn't backup my purchased apps nor my music files.

Instead, I received an error message indicating that not everything was transferred, and that my computer wasn't authorized to play the items (even though I had already authorized my computer).

Turns out you have to tell iTunes to transfer purchased apps from your iPhone to your computer, and Apple didn't put the menu option in a prominent location.

2. Transfer Purchased Apps

When you purchase apps from your iPhone, they aren't included in the iTunes backup. You have to right-click on your iPhone in iTunes and select "Transfer Purchases".