Set up as new iphone then restore later

Hi there, Aaronkorea1992!
Thanks for reaching out to the Apple Support Communities! That is a great question you have about restoring a different device backup from iCloud and I am happy to assist! You are correct about the steps to take for restoring by erasing the new device. Your new device should be backed up to iCloud as a different backup since it is a different device. You will need to choose the backup created of the old device to restore its information to the new device. You’ll find more information in this article with steps to Locate backups of your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
Have a great day!
Cheers!

Aaronkorea1992 wrote:

In this case, can I still sync and get my new iphone restored with my old icloud or should i just give up and use new icloud.

Yes, you can restore the older backup. If you haven’t had the phone that long, it may behoove you to restore the old backup since that most likely has the overwhelming majority of your data and settings on it. If you haven’t had the new phone that long, you may only be losing a couple of days or a few days of data. Any files that you have created that use iCloud Drive will still sync to the phone even if you restore the old backup because those files are in the cloud and can be downloaded again.

However, only you can decide what is more important to you now, restoring the older data or starting all over again.