Replacing a device but retaining old entity history

Occasionally some of my sensors break and need replacing, previously when doing this I would rename the new sensor to be the same as the old and everything would continue smoothly. Since 2023.4 allows renaming an entity to keep its old history, the old entity history will no longer migrate to the new entity (as the old entity must first be renamed, as outlined here).
Is there a way around this new feature? I did not want to try deleting the old entity instead of renaming in case it deleted all the history

Context: These are temperature sensors that I want to keep history for over 12 months to analyse and help improve my home’s energy efficiency season to season