My coworker's iphone 4 died...

[ame]

Well, we think. She left the house yesterday with 100% battery. By the time she got to work, 20 min later, it was dead. She took to Apple, and they told her that it "could be" the battery, but that before they replace it to try to connect it again to another cable to charge overnight, and then try to turn it on today again. So far no dice. When she got in, I connected it to my charger at work, and its been connected now for two hours, and I have tried to reset it twice, holding it down this last time for almost 3 minutes to see if that helped. My bet is that the battery is just dead.

The issue is that she thought she was syncing everything to the iCloud (not her computer because she shares with her husband and every time they'd sync they'd both end up with each other's stuff, so they stopped syncing hers) and from what we can tell, her contacts have not been all backed up to the iCloud, and now she's freaked out her pics are all gone. I am not really sure how I can check to see if her photos are on her Photo Stream if I cannot resuscitate her phone though.

If I try to log into the iCloud account on our "vacant" iPhone at work, would it populate that with the photostream?

 

[Just_Me_D]

If her photos are not lost, then all of her sync-related data should sync to the "vacant" phone when you enter in her credentials via the iCloud setup.

 

[ame]

When I connect it to my work PC (xp) it says new hardware identified (iPhone in DFU Recovery Mode) and iTunes says it must be restored before it can be used. So it's not dead, I guess...but why won't it start?

 

[ame]

If her photos are not lost, then all of her sync-related data should sync to the "vacant" phone when you enter in her credentials via the iCloud setup.

I am going to try that I think. Something is weird with this unit. Im wondering if the phone is actually not dead, but the SCREEN died.

 

[Just_Me_D]

I am going to try that I think. Something is weird with this unit. Im wondering if the phone is actually not dead, but the SCREEN died.

It's possible that the screen is no longer functioning. If you think that the phone is on, connect it to your computer and fire up the iTunes app. You should be able to see your home screen layout via iTunes. If the battery is dead then of course, you won't be able to see anything.

 

[ame]

The screen that comes up when I connect to iTunes is Recovery Mode. That might well be because I held reset for 3 minutes lol. I don't know exactly how to get out of that without recovering though.

 

[ame]

Well my backup plan isn't working bec we don't have a SIM in that other phone, and it's not letting me activate it after the update without one so unless one of these guys lets me swipe their SIM for a while which is unlikely, I don't think my little plan is gonna work. I cannot get the computer to do anything but DFU mode, and none of my attempts to override or exit DFU mode will work.

 

[ame]

Sadly Apple could not recover her images, or her phone. They agree with my assessment that whatever the Verizon fellow did, likely borked it further. It might have been recoverable datawise, but the unit is not recoverable. Her contacts are on iCloud thankfully, but her Photostream was totally wiped out, whatever he did. She's pissed, but she's glad I tried and glad her contacts are there. I did get Dropbox set up for her, for when she gets the new phone together, and I am going to set that all up for her so she knows how to go in and do it. I told her she needs to set a calendar reminder for say once a week to start that up and let it update to backup her photos, and do an iCloud backup for her pics. We don't have wifi here (!!!) so she'll have to do that at home.

 

[anon(4698833)]

It's always a smart idea to live by the stance that nothing on a mobile device is 100% safe and should always have a backup. I know it wasn't you...but instilling that logic to her would certainly help, my wife was terrible at it in the past, until one day she lost a very expensive digital script she was reviewing. She is the most anal file back up master now that she gets onto ME about it! lol...

 

[ame]

I am ridiculous about it. But part of that is my line of work. I run my own business, and was the managing partner at a second one (Im so glad I parted ways!) and having backups all over was the biggest thing for me. Dropbox, Zumodrive (RIP), at least 4 backup drives, thumbdrives, offsites, etc. I have stuff EVERYWHERE. And some of them I deliberately sync and dismount so that if I overwrite I still have it to restore. My friends and colleagues tease me about it but boy it's saved my *** and theirs more than I care to admit! I have backups of my contacts from all my accounts saved as spreadsheets on my computer at home and at work, and that file is also backed up 10 times too. And I update it every few weeks.

I set her and her husband up on Dropbox today, and another coworker that works mostly remotely was in today to give me some contracts and some money(yay!) had his phone upgraded and didn't have any of his email or anything set up yet, so I got him all set up, got his iCloud active and put dropbox on there. His secretary at his office is going to cuss at me Monday for resetting their password on his email but he couldn't remember it to tell me so I just reset it, and it's almost identical to what his other stuff is.

But getting people to back stuff up is SO big...my mom is finally there I think, though I want them all on Dropbox. I have a Pro account, and I am considering getting them set up on one of their own for photos.... Her's took a dive off the bathroom counter into the toilet one day. She had it up playing music and her hand smacked it off the dock...dunk! She didn't have hers backed up. So she was hosed.