New iPhone 17 Pro already showing 11H,41M of Lifetime Call Time???

Bought a Brand New iPhone 17 Pro Yesterday from an AT&T company store. I upgraded it from my 16 Pro at the store and drove home while it finished downloading the apps from the cloud. I had not made ANY calls at all other than the less than 1 minute test call the store employee made to make sure it was working before I left the store. After I got home I was going through the settings to make sure all my preferences had transfered correctly from my old phone when I noticed that under Cellular > Cellular Usage Statistics > Lifetime this NEW phone was already showing to have "11 hours, 41 minutes" of Lifetime Call Time, the "Current Period" showed only 1 Minutes. I called the store to make sure they sold me a new phone and they said it was brand new, not used, not refurbished and had no idea why it would show so many hours/mins of lifetime use already and suggested I call Apple. I did but the girl I got also seemed to have no clue other than to suggest maybe it was randomly chosen as a QC Test phone at the factory. I know companies sometimes do that but 12H, 41M is a LOT, plus factorys usually would reset a timer on such things so the purchacer never knows. The girl did check the serial number and said it showed to have been made in Octobver and first Sold new and activated for the first time on Dec. 31 2025 which is the day I bought it. Someone said maybe it somehow pulled the hours from my old phone but that doesn't work either as I'd had my old phone just over a year and it shows 27 hours, 16 minutes on it.


Does anyone have a clue why a NEW phone would show so many hours and minutes?

Can it be reset to a more accurate reading somehow? The time shown under Current Period should be the accurate usage if it was indeed brand new when I bought it as AT&T and Apple both claim.


I mean it's NEW and already has almost half as many hours on it as my old phone had after an entire year+ of use.


iPhone 17

Posted on Jan 1, 2026 5:09 PM

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7 replies

Jan 1, 2026 11:06 PM in response to SandtownRanch

"New iPhone 17 Pro already showing 11H,41M of Lifetime Call Time???: As I said in my original post I asked them and they said it was not returned or refurbished.: Plus Apple says their records show the serial number has never been activated prior to me activating it yesterday. So was hoping someone might have an idea how it could have hours on it when Apple says it has never been activated before."

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Jan 2, 2026 3:47 AM in response to SandtownRanch

SandtownRanch wrote:

As I said in my original post I asked them and they said it was not returned or refurbished.
Plus Apple says their records show the serial number has never been activated prior to me activating it yesterday.

So was hoping someone might have an idea how it could have hours on it when Apple says it has never been activated before.

It is quite possible that it has inherited the call times from your previous device, assuming you activated your new phone from a backup of your previous phone.

Jan 2, 2026 7:58 AM in response to SandtownRanch

SandtownRanch wrote:

That wasn't the hours on my old phone, nor have I ever had that happen before and we did the upgrade the same way I do every year. So odd that IF it pulled hours from my old phone but only PART of them as my old phone had 27H,16m on it

It's likely based on the billing period. Whatever it is, it isn't something I'd be very concerned about on a brand new phone.

New iPhone 17 Pro already showing 11H,41M of Lifetime Call Time???

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