Upgrading from an iPad 1 to an iPad 2 (AT&T)

How to Upgrade from iPad 3G to iPad 2 3G (iPad 1 to iPad 2 Upgrade - AT&T)

Rather than stand in line on March 11, 2011, I ordered it online and finally received it in the mail almost three weeks later. Today, I finally got around to enabling it because I wasn't sure how I was going to transfer my data including my AT&T 3G Unlimited Plan.

It was actually relatively simple, here are the general steps I used.

1. Backup Your iPad 1 3G and install the latest upgrade. In my case, I had to upgrade my iPad 1 to 4.3.2 first. I used the following site's instructions. (Thanks Cory!)

http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_upgrade_ipad_ipad_2#slide-3

(source: Maclife Cory Bohon)

2. After opening up my iPad 2 3G box, the first thing I noticed was that I really couldn't tell the difference between the iPad 1 and iPad 2. I had seen my daughter a few weeks ago and I knew it was smaller, but in the box I really couldn't tell. As I started to panic that they shipped the wrong one, I saw the camera lens in the upper right corner and started to get excited again. Unfortunately my iPad is a Mission Critical device and being down and having to find someone talk to at the "Rethink Possible" company with the Globe was not something I was interested in doing this evening.

The activation and data synchronization process went flawlessly. During this process, I had time to have dinner and check on it a few times. During this time, I found the following site below since I heard that AT&T has deprecated the Unlimited Data Plan for new customers but my iPad 1 3G account has been grandfathered (thank you AT&T!).

Here's the article I used to transfer my grandfathered AT&T 3G plan to the iPad 2.

How to Transfer iPad 1 AT&T Unlimited Data Plan to iPad 2
http://wlanbook.com/how-to-transfer-ipad-1-att-unlimited-data-plan-to-ipad-2/

(Source: wlanbook.com)

In general, I clicked on this link and took the replaced the old IMEI and ICCID numbers on this site. There appear to be several bugs on AT&T's site so I had to close and re-start my browser several times. I also ended up using both Safari and Firefox before I finally got it to work.

http://www.att.com/ipadlanding

I also had to turn off Wireless and reboot my new iPad 2 before it finally the 3G service finally worked. But it did and I didn't have to call those AT&T "Rethink Possible" guys.

There were several items that I had to re-input on my new iPad 2:

• iPad 2 password
• iPad 2 wireless password
• MobileMe password

Some things that didn't work very well:

• My iPad icons that I so carefully arranged with the iPad 1 did not appear in all of my folders on the iPad 2.
  
• Some of my iPad 2 icons disappeared such as my favorite iPad App that I had on the bottom of my screen. (I would recommend removing icons from the bottom of the screen before the upgrade).