New iPhone on the desk, old iPhone saying “6 hours remaining”. The transfer isn’t slow — your library is huge. Fix the library, fix the transfer.
The direct answer
On the old phone: delete the 10 biggest videos, swipe last year’s bursts keeping one winner each, bulk-delete screenshots — then empty Recently Deleted and start the transfer over. Most “stuck” transfers drop to under an hour. Back up irreplaceables first (backup guide).
What to do now
- Check the scale: old phone Settings > General > iPhone Storage. If Photos dominates, that’s your hours.
- Kill giants first: videos biggest-first (4K guide). Ten deletions can remove 10GB.
- Bursts + screenshots: one-winner pass (burst guide, screenshot guide).
- Empty Recently Deleted (steps) — skipped by everyone, required for the space to count.
- Restart the transfer via Quick Start on stable wifi, both phones on power.
What not to rely on
- “It’ll finish overnight.” It might — or fail at 3am on one corrupt 2GB clip. Shrink first, sleep easy.
- Buying emergency iCloud. Doesn’t speed phone-to-phone transfer and won’t finish uploading before you give up.
- Excluding Photos from backup. Arrives at a “clean” new phone missing every memory. Delete junk, transfer keepers.
What Odoa clears / What Odoa does not fix
Clears: the 30-50% that’s weight without worth — on-device, with Trash + undo. Does not fix: broken wifi, dying cables, or Apple-server outages on launch day. If the progress bar truly freezes after cleanup, restart both phones and retry.
The problem
Transfers copy everything, including the 3,000 photos you meant to delete in 2023. Nobody cleans before upgrading, so every new phone inherits the last phone’s junk — plus interest.
The bottom line
Clean the old phone tonight, wake up to a new phone with room to breathe. Then keep it that way with the camera roll method.