Itunes backup size

You are looking at the wrong backup.

I am certain that you are looking at the wrong backup data on iTunes or you are reading the iPhone storage incorrectly. If you have only one backup then that is not your iPhone backup. If you do not have any other device then please erase the backup from the Manage Backups button and take a fresh backup.

Please note that backups are compressed and are a lot smaller than the actual storage used on your device.

For example, a backup size of 28.03 GB used space on iPhone will have a Backup Size of 5.26GB on iTunes/Finder and iCloud backup size will be 3.5 GB because everything that is synced to iCloud is not backed up on iCloud.

Please see the GIF below on how to read the backups correctly.

As I said, the backup size on the computer is irrelevant, and what I didn’t say is that it does not contain any apps in the backup; apps are redownloaded from the App Store after the backup restores.

Are you sure the iPhone 7 is only 32GB? It came in 32, 128 and 256 GB. Go to Settings/General/About and check.

But you will have to delete content from the iPhone 7 before backing it up; go to Settings/General/iPhone Storage to see what is using the most data, and what you can delete.

First, her “new” XR is not new. The XR was discontinued 1.5 years ago. So it is a used XR that is new to her.

Have you tried to restore, or are you assuming you cannot? The smallest XR is 64 GB, twice the capacity of the 32 GB iPhone 7, so an iPhone 7 backup should restore with no problem, unless the backup is corrupted.

Also, the space that a backup requires on a computer is much larger than the space the contents occupy on the iPhone, for several reasons, but primarily because it is not just an image of the phone, it is a SQLite database that has database indexing overhead, and each data item on the phone is a separate file in the computer database, and there is a minimum file size on the computer, so even a 10 byte data item will still require 4K or more on the computer.