An airline had misplaced my iPhone and so I purchased a new one. The airline has now found my phone - will I be able to access my photos which have been taken since my last back up, if I have restored the new from from a previous back up?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Original Title: Photos from Found Phone
iPhone 16 Pro, iOS 18
CharlesP76 wrote:
An airline had misplaced my iPhone and so I purchased a new one. The airline has now found my phone - will I be able to access my photos which have been taken since my last back up, if I have restored the new from from a previous back up?
Some context is missing.
If you didn’t erase it, the contents of the recovered iPhone are still available.
If you did erase it, the contents are gone.
If not erased, and if the photos are in iCloud Photos, the photos are available to any device logged into the same Apple Account.
If not erased and the photos are stored local, they can be moved to iCloud or loaded into a Mac or PC, as your usual practice.
If you are trying to move photos that were local and not in iCloud Photos from the recovered iPhone to the new iPhone, configure the recovered iPhone and the new iPhone for iCloud Photos, and wait for it to sync. All photos will then be available everywhere using the same Apple Account, assuming enough storage is available in your iCloud subscription.
It sounds like you had iCloud Backup turned on with the original phone, is that right? And you didn't have iCloud Photos turned on-- is that right? If so, then you may have several backups at iCloud, and whichever one you pick will have pictures up until it was saved at iCloud, and not after.
If you restored iCloud Backup from the old phone to set up the new iPhone, then it should have all the pictures.
Do you have two iPhones now? If you do, then you can test what happens with one of them.
As MrHoffman said, we'd need more information about how you used iCloud and backup to be more specific.
Can I access my photos if I restore iCloud backup from previous iPhone?
