I just abandoned my backup chain dating back to my iPhone 4 as an Apple technician I position it to customers on a regular basis . I had an intermittent music playback issue dealing with subways and cellular service . If you ' ve got absolutely every other backup feature toggled on except device backup , the hassle is arguably pretty minimal . You ' re going to first and foremost lose your Messages history . Beyond that you ' re going to have to reconfigure everything in Settings , login to all your accounts again , and finally redownload and place all your apps . <| sep |> It ' s been a while , but I think this was it e t i q u e t t e w h enbeingimpoliteatworkpays . htmlWhen googling it I found many other articles with similar advice , if that one doesn ' t float your boat .