How long does transferring data to new iPhone take?

It depends on how much content you are transferring and the speed of the WiFi connection. Are you still, waiting for the transfer to complete and if so, how long have you been waiting? It could take several hours if you had a great deal of content to move.

I'm regretting not taking the manual option. I have a ton of music. I'm over 4 hours with the Activating message. I see the phone is getting a cellular signal, but no indication it is doing anything. Even the message on my old phone disappeared. Patience has never been a virtue for me.

That is a different story. If you are still waiting for the phone to be activated, transferring content hasn’t even started yet. Activating shouldn’t take anywhere near that long. Literally, it should be a few minutes or so.

I don’t think that you have anything to lose by powering down and starting over again.

Several hours? Ugh. I'm on super fast wifi at work and have about 8gb of data on the phone. Currently 40 mins in and waiting.

I don’t think that is out of line at all if you include app downloads. Are you seeing any estimated time remaining?

No there was never any indication of time. Just a message on the Activating your iPhone screen that says "It may take a few minutes to activate your iPhone". Flirting with an hour now

Yup...24 mins remaining now. Bad start

I’m a little confused. So now you are seeing an estimate for time remaining? Is it going down at all?

Yeah, all good now. The 24 mins was how long the transfer was estimated to take after the restart. Thanks.

Excellent. I’m glad to hear you got it up and running and everything transferred.