Good question:
Caveat: I’m not a 15 owner so am not speaking from personal experiences, but the following is excerpted from another well-respected community member’s post re: setting up a brand new iPhone 15:
Note that they started w/ the quick transfer … it asked if they “wanted” to update … to which the user HAD to reply in the affirmative.
It then updated … and then the user had to initiate a quick transfer a 2nd time.
Note too that this was an “early adopter, pre-ordered, first day of delivery” user experience back on or about 9/22 … prior to the release of 17.0.3 … so Apple might have “tuned-up” this process a bit. (i.e. Today it might not even give you the opportunity to NOT update)
Also, your newer phone might actually ship w/ a newer iOS already installed.
Excerpt of 9/22 post:
- Powered on new iPhone
- Choose language
- Hovered new phone over old phone with the transfer “blob”
- Phone asked if I wanted to move data over
- Then phone prompt then announced that an update was available and asked if wanted to update
- Manually Chose “Update”
- Once update was complete, started the process again; hovering new phone over old phone to read the “blob”
- Then the transfer started