Restoring information from a broken iPhone 15

I have an iPhone 15 which has been significantly damaged today, screen is unresponsive / unreadable. My broken iPhone is linked to an Apple account with other iPhones on it that I share with my husband. I have put my SIM card into an older iPhone, but when I set it up, it will only restore the information from my husbands phone, I can’t seem to restore the information that was specific to my broken phone.


any help would be massively appreciated

iPhone 15, iOS 18

Posted on Aug 26, 2025 2:20 PM

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4 replies

Aug 26, 2025 2:34 PM in response to Welshfamily25

IF.....you have the screen repaired......if it is possible......the phone will be reset to look like a new phone.


IF.....you have a current backup of the broken phone on iCloud or a computer, you can use the data in the backup to restore your phone during the new setup, so the repaired phone will look like it did before the screen took the hit.


IF.....you prefer to not have the broken phone repaired.....and want to buy a new phone, you can use the current backup of the broken phone to restore the data back to the new phone, so it will look like your broken phone before it took the hit.


IF.....you unfortunately don't have a backup of the broken phone.....it is not possible to retrieve the data from the broken phone....even if the phone's screen is repaired.


So, I think you now understand the real bottom line here.




Aug 26, 2025 4:32 PM in response to Welshfamily25

Sharing an Apple account is a recipe for disaster.


If the older phone you are trying to restore to is running an older version of iOS than the phone you were previously using, you will not be able to restore the backup of your phone to it.


Never mind the massive confusion you're going to have to sort through regarding contacts, calendars, etc. that were being synced to iCloud, assuming you were syncing with iCloud.


Your best bet is to create your own Apple account and use that to set up the device from scratch.

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Restoring information from a broken iPhone 15

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