Q: New iPhone 7 has impossible Lifetime and Current Period call times

This class of problem seems to be both quite longstanding and reported reasonably often, usually with different values in the Lifetime and Current Period timers. All of the replies I've looked at suggest that the new phone has been set up by restoring from a previous phone. That is not the case for me so I thought I would document my experience.

The starting point is a brand new iPhone 7 purchased, in person, from an Apple Store.

My previous handset, which I am still using, was an iPhone 4S. Knowing that I would not be able to simply move the micro-SIM from the iPhone 4S into the iPhone 7, I also took the opportunity to start a new SIM-only plan with a completely new provider.

Key point: the iPhone 7 was not set up in the Apple Store. It has been sitting in its shrink-wrapped box waiting for the provider to send me a nano-SIM in the mail.

The nano-SIM arrived two days ago. It was still in its credit-card-sized surround and had to be popped out (ie it gave every appearance of being brand new). I inserted it in the iPhone 7 and turned the phone on. As expected, the phone said "no service" because the SIM had not been activated.

During the setup process that runs on first boot, the iPhone 7 gave me the option of restoring from backup or setting it up as a new phone. I chose the "new phone" option.

When I first connected the iPhone 7 to a Mac running iTunes, I was again offered the option to restore from backup but, again, I chose "new phone".

I then set about copying apps and other stuff from iTunes onto the iPhone 7, and generally fiddled about setting preferences how I like them. I also let iTunes update iOS to 10.0.3.

A few minutes ago I activated the nano-SIM. After a small delay and a reboot, the iPhone 7 connected to the new provider's network. At that point, it had neither made nor received any calls.

Now, what do I see on the iPhone 7 in Settings > Mobile > Call Time? I see both "Current Period" and "Lifetime" set to 23 Hours, 22 Minutes.

It should be obvious but I'll say it anyway. A brand new phone with a brand new SIM that had only been activated five minutes earlier and which had never made any calls could not possibly have run up a call time of 23 hours 22 minutes.

Any explanation which suggests the 23 Hours, 22 Minutes values came from any form of "restore" needs to account for how this can be true if the phone was never actually "restored".

What do I see in the same screen on the iPhone 4S? "Current Period" is 1 hour, 26 minutes and "Lifetime" is 2 Days, 3 Hours. And, yes, the eagle-eyed reader will have spotted that I do not make all that many calls.

Any explanation proposing that I must've done a restore by mistake but forgotten about it will need to consider how the 23 hours 22 minutes on the iPhone 7 bears any relationship to the 1 hour, 26 minutes and 2 Days, 3 Hours showing on the iPhone 4S. I can't spot any relationship. So, if an unknown "restore" is implicated, it wasn't getting the timer values from the iPhone 4S backup. The iPhone 4S and iPhone 7 are the only two handsets that have ever been sync'd with iTunes on my 2015 MacBook Pro so there isn't a mysterious ancient backup for a long-forgotten handset lurking in the background.

The same argument applies if it is simply the process of connecting a new iPhone to iTunes that causes the new phone to inherit the call timers of any other handset known to that copy of iTunes: 23 hours 22 minutes is neither 1 hour 26 minutes nor 2 days 3 hours.

The iPhone 7 left the Apple Store still shrink-wrapped so it wasn't "guru-induced".

I also don't backup to iCloud. The new iPhone 7 came set up to do that by default and, indeed, promptly backed itself up to the cloud. I turned that off and deleted the backup from the cloud. Any explanation that involves the iPhone 7 somehow inheriting values from an iPhone 4S backup stored in the cloud needs to account for (a) there not actually being an iPhone 4S backup in the cloud for the iPhone 7 to get its hooks into and (b) the discrepancy between the 23 Hours, 22 Minutes value and the relevant values from the iPhone 4S.

My working theories are (1) the SIM not being as new as it seems; (2) the network provider sending some random junk when the service was activated; or (3) something more prosaic.

I can't find any information which suggests call timers are either carried on the SIM or are initialised over-the-air. Unfortunately, because the two phones I have to hand use SIMs of different sizes, I have no means of testing whether the call timers "follow the phone" or "follow the SIM".

As to the "more prosaic" option, the 23 hours 22 minutes would probably be a reasonable estimate of the amount of time my iPhone 7 was turned on *before* the SIM was activated. Maybe "new phone + inactive SIM", or even "new phone + no SIM" are edge cases Apple never considered, and the random call timer values that show up in these forum postings can all be put down to the time it takes users to get working SIMs into their handsets.