Once you’ve successfully updated your number, contacts you’ve been chatting with in Signal will see a new message inline in your thread that notes that you’ve changed their phone number, along with a helpful link to update your contact card accordingly. Crucially, though, you won’t lose your existing thread or groups that you’re already a part of.
The new feature is intended for users who are keeping their current phone but getting a new phone number — if you’re just upgrading to a new phone and want to keep all your stuff, you’ll need to use Signal’s local data transfer feature to send over your data from your old device to a new one.
