I have recently bought a new iPhone and now can’t erase my old phone to give to my parents. I went to “Erase all Setting” which didn’t reset the phone as I wanted so went to “Erase all Content and Settings” but it asks for my iCloud password which I can’t remember.
How can I erase my old iPhone 7 without knowing my password, or waiting 24 hours or more for the password recovery process to finish? I guess I can always flash the firmware but unsure how to about it.
I did create a new iCloud account for my new iPhone though.
I want to say that Leo has previously said when someone sells an iPhone, in order for the new owner to use the phone, the original owner MUST sign out of their iCloud acct. So, I think you will have to reset that password and then sign out first.
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To prevent stolen devices there is no way to reset a device that is associated with someone’s account to not be associated with that account. Even flashing the firmware will not achieve this. Calling Apple (assuming visiting a store at this time is not possible) would result in them demanding proof you own the hardware (they would want info from the purchase receipt.) Your only, and therefore best, option is to being able to sign into it properly so that you can follow the steps to remove your account from it. (From the phone support line, they need to be able to turn off the “find my” setting.)
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Cool… sorted it now so it’s all good 
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Yes, we had that problem at a previous employer, the CEO fired someone, had the phone collected and we couldn’t reset it. The person refused to hand over the password, as the phone was registered to his private account…
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That’s the company’s fault. They should have mandated that it be registered to a corporate address. Or used an Apple program to purchase the phone. With VPP, you don’t need to register to an address.
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You don’t need to tell me… This was the same CEO who suddenly found the Apple religion and threw out his Windows laptop for a MacBook Pro, then complained that Outlook didn’t work properly - it didn’t do certain things.
I tried to explain that the OS X version of Outlook didn’t have certain features… That was when he called me incompetent, even when faced with an official reply from the Microsoft Office team on the Microsoft Support forums stating that the feature didn’t exist on the OS X version and there were no plans to implement it… Yes, I was incompetent and I had to come up with a way of implementing this feature in Outlook for OS X, even though Microsoft officially said it was impossible…
Use company accounts? Yep, we stated that when we started using iPhones, but he didn’t want it, because he couldn’t then use his private account on his company phones… Yes, phones, I was still using a Galaxy S3 in 2016, because he had twice used my contract to get himself the latest iPhone model! And the old iPhones? Handed down to his daughter or used as a “carphone”, because it was too much trouble to plug in the cable every time he got into the car, so he ran a second iPhone permanently installed in his BMW with a second SIM.
My next total incompetence was when he switched from the BMW to a VW Tuareg, the Tuareg entertainment system only supported 500 names and addresses. I had to find a solution to him having all 5,000 contacts available in the car, using the VW entertainment system… The only option was to wait 4 months for the next model of the Tuareg, which came with a different system, which fulfilled his needs…
That was about the time I left the company. I went past the building a month or so later and his 6 month old Tuareg was gone and a new Mercedes GLC Coupe stood in his parking spot…
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