Start of loop disease.

It’s a well known iPhone 7 problem that all of them develop eventually. A decent microsoldering technician should be able to fix it though.

Have an 8 which is the same sort of size as that SE, and to be honest it’s still too big to keep in your pocket especially if you’re running. I end up holding mine in my hand if I’m using Strava.

The first gen SE that came before that though was a gem.

UK here, have stuck with Three/iD for the time being. Wildly inconsistent coverage if we're talking nationally, but local to me they're good enough to justify their (very) low price.

Two years, but only one generation newer in terms of processor, etc.

8 hours screen on time or 8 hours off of a charger?

Should work in that case.

Make sure your region is set to a country other than Japan, location services are switched on, and you have a SIM card issued from the country you’re in.

That’s all!

Edit: one other overlooked thing, the phone has to be on silent.

Are you on iOS 15 or above?

As I understand it stops automatically once you’re out of the country. Once you’re back and have a US SIM card back in the phone it should go away.

iPhones don’t back up automatically unless they’re on WiFi unfortunately afaik.

A single iMessage should absolutely not be 10MB.

iPhone 6 or SE. Under $50 for either which leaves a bit of money for a fresh battery.

Edit: more importantly unlike the 5S they both offer VoLTE which is an absolute must for use in the US.

Depends on which size you prefer. Not much else in it really.

Without unlocking the phone and getting it on WiFi there won’t be any way to back it up regardless unfortunately…

Cracked it out of anger and looked after it pretty well seem like contradictions.

To be quite honest more often than not I find that the people who complain about having an older phone have absolutely trashed it in their ownership to the point that it doesn’t work correctly.

You could be getting throttled depending on carrier?

1 percent in 7 months would mean about 11 years of usage before it reaches 80% health. Plenty of time to go!

I wouldn’t stress it too much.

Yes, the phone has to be fully wiped and setup from scratch.

There are unofficial workarounds to get iOS 16 backups to restore onto 15 but it’s impossible to guarantee that it’d work.

iOS 15.6 is still being signed, from which you can update to 15.7.

I’d hazard a guess that the antenna has broke causing no signal, and the WiFi chip broke as a result of the fall. The two issues are completely separate of each other for sure.

There’s a chance it could be caused by it being blacklisted instead, which would happen if someone’s claimed on their insurance.

Either way I think that’s a little steep for a smashed 12. You probably could have bought a working 64GB one for that price. Hell, with Google’s trade in values you probably could’ve got a brand new Pixel 6a for about that price too after trade-in.

Really the main issue with the Plus is that it’s dreadfully expensive for what it is. Besides that it’s an entirely competent phone.

If it was my money I’d look into unlocking again. Most companies have fairly lax policies nowadays if the phone has been paid off, especially if you have an account with the company.

Honestly the two phones are so similar I don’t think there’s any point upgrading unless you’re quite literally getting the phone for free. You could argue in fact that the 12 Pro Max is actually the better phone out of the two.

I’d stick with the 12 and go with a sim-only plan. Not much point going with a 14 Plus unless you’re upgrading from something older like a 7 or 8 Plus.

It’s an alright phone, but the 13 Pro Max can be had for about the same price and is the better phone in just about every way.

It was possible with older iPhones up to around the X. With new updates it’s become harder, and new phones have made it impossible (for now).

I’d limp it along with a battery bank for a while and save for something like an SE.

The 2020 models already go for ~£100 on eBay, the 2022 model will probably quickly follow suit.

The earliest version you can update to is 15 unfortunately.

What apps are you trying to download?