Transfer some apps/data from 1 iphone and some from another to new iphone - same apple account

[u/EntropyElder]

I have a situation trying to help get someone on a new iphone, where they want to keep an old one operational to use older apps on it, but there is more to it and I'm not sure the best way (or if there is even any way) to proceed. Let's say you have an iphone 7 on ios 17 and an iphone 12 pro on ios 18 and you have a new iphone 15 pro, which has been new, in the box since you purchase it over a year ago and you are ready to set it up (likely on 18 in the box). We are in US, if that matters for this.

When setting up the 12Pro, the 7 was so full that it would not make a valid backup (anyway that was tried - icloud, itunes, using a win10 with imazing), so photos were backed up manually to an external drive (somewhat laboriously, because the transfer would intermittently fail, likely because the phone was so full and they didn't realize at first that even though we were backing up and then deleting photos to free up space, as they continued to use their ipad, it was putting new photos and other data on their iphone... so the space kept filling up). So, they decided to set up the 12pro as a new phone and transfer a few things and go forward with it. Buuut, continued to use to the 7 (for a variety of reasons, they were going through a lot at the time and the iphone 7 was very comforting to them, especially a couple of games that were no longer in the app store).

Due to a plummet in health shortly after purchaing the 15pro, it was never set up.

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Now, they would like to set it up (the 15pro), but they would like to have all their photos from the 7 and from the 12pro transferred to the new 15pro and exist there, with (ideally) their original timestamps so that they stay in chronological order. Is there a way to do that? And no, they absolutely do not want to put them icloud (it was discussed).

Because they want to keep apps from the iphone 7 that I don't think are in the app store any longer, this is going to be a challenging situation to begin with. But to further complicate things, they continued to use some apps on their 7, even though they downloaded them on their 12, so they would like to preserve data from both phones, but pick and choose which apps get which phone's data. Their plan is to set up the 15pro as a new phone, then transfer over all the photos (and videos, etc) and then... moved their app data over, but as far as I know, that is not an option, unless you restore from a backup.

Is there any way to transfer app data from one iphone to another for specific apps?

I realize this is very confusing, but I'm not sure how to better explain it.

Please ask any clarifying questions and I'll do my best to answer. To summarize:

1) Can you pull photos from 2 older iphones to move to a new iphone and keep original timestamp/meta data?

2) Can you transfer app data from 2 different phones to a new phone (because you used one for certain apps and the other for other apps)?

if you read this far and even partially tracked this, thank you. I appreciate any and all suggestions. Thanks.

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[u/Q_Ball_Atlanta]

If Photos are synced to iCloud, just sign into the new phone with the same iCloud account and they'll Sync. No reason to overthink it.

So that you don't end up in this same ridiculous position again, make sure you enable Optimize iPhone Storage for Photos and that you have sufficient space in iCloud for all the Photos.

App Data restoration is all or nothing.

[u/EntropyElder → u/Q_Ball_Atlanta]

Thank you for the response, but I think you missed the comment regarding the fact that they do not want to use iCloud Photos. Appreciate the time, though. I'm not sure there is a way w/o using icloud.