Restore from backup, AFTER phone has been used

Thanks muguy,

Let me verify my understanding based on the following:

1. iPhone 6 plus eventually completes a successful iCloud backup.

• • It's connected to wi-fi - no SIM
  • Let's presume it's messages only

The iPhone 13 is up and running, fully functional, all aspects (photos, messages, etc.) contacts/photos are on/backing up to OneDrive

Will the previous message history from iPhone 6 now be visible on the iphone 13?

Do I need to set up or prompt "syncing across devices"?

Thanks

First, thanks for your continued engagement.

I have followed your instructions and enabled messages in hopes that they will propagate across to the new device. Having made a visit to the "Genius Bar" prior, they noticed that there was a notification at the bottom of the screen that read as follows:

"Messages in iCloud are current disabled"

Repair Account

They suggested the "Repair Account" as a last resort, which sounded quite ominous :-). This message appears to be gone, but old messages are not appearing on the new device and nor are new messages appearing on the old device, which was my expectation per your advice.

The Genius Bar also indicated that iOS versioning delta could be an issue (12.5.5 vs. 15.4)

So......

1. The iPhone 6 is connected via a hardwired ethernet connection and backing photos up to OneDrive by Year/Month. Recall that wi-fi kept stopping when backing up the phone to iCloud.
2. No iCloud backup has been executed for the iPhone 6
3. The iPhone 13 is backing up photos to OneDrive as well, pointing to the same camera roll--a good thing-seamless.
4. I have Messages turned on to sync with iCloud. This is the only item. With the exception of Shared folders and iCloud Backup, all other items are not syncing. I am narrowing in on Messages only.

There seem to be some constraints inhibiting the resolution, one being not having the ability to backup/restore messages only. Perhaps that's a paradigm I need to break out of based on messages syncing across all devices, it may not be a needed function.