Can I get back the phone after erasing it?

[iMore Question]

I did an incredibly stupid thing, I erased my girlfriends phone after a blazing row, needless to say I am not the flavor of the month at the moment

Anyway, we have the phone, iCloud passwords, Apple id, will there be a problem???

 

[Just_Me_D]

You can restore your device by connecting it to a computer, initiate the computer's iTunes app, and when iTunes detects it, choose to restore it. Make sure the computer is connected to the internet. If your girlfriend created a backup recently, either via iTunes or iCloud, select to restore from that backup when the process is finished and you are prompted to choose a backup to restore from. If a backup has not been made, you will have to set it up as a new device. There is no recovering of the data that was previously on it.

If you simply erased all contents and settings and are at the welcome screen, skip to the part in regard to restoring from a backup as stated above.

 

[anon(5140585)]

I agree! 9/10 your gf setup iCloud backup when she first bought the device. There are some programs out there to scrub the iPhone for recoverable data, but I have never had much success with them. iCloud backup is definitely the easiest/best way to save device data beyond the device. Most users never connect to a computer to backup.