Apple Won’t Tell You How to Get Your iPhone’s Data Back
Imagine you’re trip to the Adirondacks and you drop your phone in a lake, or you are at home and your phone ends up in the pool.
All those photos and videos are lost. Your iPhone has become water damaged. You didn’t have a recent backup of all your photos or you didn’t even have iCloud setup.
So what do you do now?
Why contacting Apple Won’t Help
This is what happens to tons of my customers. They bring it to the Apple store in Crossgates Mall (1 Crossgates Mall Rd, Albany, NY 12203) or their local Apple store. That’s when they get the bad news. Apple does not offer data recovery. Apple Won’t Tell You How to Get Your iPhone’s Data Back. If you have no backups there is their is nothing Apple will do to help. These customers want their data back and are willing to do anything to get it.
Apples Stance on Recovery
Apple has a stance that if the photos weren’t synced with iCloud, you don’t have a backup or you cannot connect the phone to a computer to transfer data then they are unable to retrieve the photos or data.
Previously I have been told by Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers “that Apple as a company does not provide data recovery. They do not have the tools or expertise to try and recover that data.” In the past Apple has direct or suggest customers can try third-party companies like Eric’s Computer Services, but “that’s not authorized by Apple.”
Apple is aware that it’s possible to recover data from damaged devices. I would guess that 90-95% of water damaged iPhones I see are recoverable. Apple is not will to help customers with data recovery.
What Can Be Done
If you do not have backups you contact the data recovery expert Eric’s Computer Services. He offers data recovery services for situations just like this, where data on an iPhone cannot be accessed until the device is bootable.
Fixing iPhone’s and recovering data is a not something you see every day. Fixing a damaged phone at the micro level a highly sough after skill. If a phone can be made bootable enough to get all the photos and data that data can be copied and given back to a customer. While water damaged phones are no longer reliable enough for daily use when a customers data is recovered they generally do not care about the old damaged phone anymore.
How iPhone Recovery Happens
Repairing a modern smartphone is an advanced task even for a data recovery expert. Repairs for water damage or a damaged logic board requires a steady hand and years of practice and research. Individual components need to be tested and repaired or replaced. on the logic board.
iPhone Logic Board Look
Lets take a look at a the iPhone 7 Plus logic board.
Phones can be repaired to a to a point of limited functionality to recover the data of an modern unencrypted iPhone. The phone repair does not have to be long lasting. As a matter of fact is is most likely only going to be temporarily. Just long enough to get the data off.
Apple has a security feature that prevents you from moving the storage chip and placing it it into another phone. As long as that storage medium isn’t damaged, you just need a recovery that is successful to access it.
The reasons a phone cannot be recovered is if the storage chip is damaged or wiped or if the chips that handle the passcode, Apple ID authorization, or any other security features become damaged, then recovery is not possible.
It’s absolutely possible to recover data from an iPhone
As long as a data recovery pro can get a phone to the point where it boots up and unlocks, then iPhone Data Recovery is possible and a backup can be make of the photos and videos.
Your Data, Your Problem
The best action is to make backups before anything happens since Apple has a “your data, your problem” approach to helping customers get data back.
Have a iCloud or manual backup. You can use iCloud on your iPhone (Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > iCloud Backup) or iTunes on your computer.
Frequently or manually also create and verify backups is a good idea.