replacing t46g and retaining all settings

[asinshesq]

I'm going to replace a t46g that may have a faulty audio channel with a new t46g and I want to save a lot of configuration effort by backing up the entire configuration of my current t46g. My current t46g has the experimental .37 firmware but the new one will presumably come with the most recent approved firmware. A few questions:

1. In order to use the backup from my current t46g to 'restore' the new t46g, do I need to first upgrade the firmware of the new t46g to .37? I would rather not do that because I really want to test things based on the approved firmware but I wasn't sure whether that creates a problem since the backup was of a phone with the .37 firmware.

2. Once I 'restore' the new phone, put it on the IP address the old phone had and remove the old phone from the system, will 3cx automatically recognize it as the same extension as the old phone had or will I need to click to 'add as existing extension' and then pick the extension of the old phone?

3. Is there anything else I need to do so that the new phone is an exact clone of what the old phone looked like (other than firmware if the answer to (1) was that I don't need to update to .37)?

Thanks.