Is there any way to retrieve photos from an iPhone 5s? (1 Viewer)

[DavidJ]

Well, I've never had a problem like this, but today the light and camera on my iPhone 5s decided to stop working. It was a desperate situation and I broke my own rules and tried to run the 7.0.3 update wirelessly. This led to the phone locking up on a blue screen. I finally had to give up and reset it which of course led to the connect to iTunes screen and a restore. Unfortunately, I had some photos and videos from our film score recording session and others that are now lost. And to top things off, the light and camera still don't work.

 

[Steve Tannehill]

Once you've restored, all data on the phone is lost unless you backed it up prior to the restore/crash.

Your phone is still under warranty, I would be calling Apple now.

 

[DavidJ]

Once you've restored, all data on the phone is lost unless you backed it up prior to the restore/crash.

Your phone is still under warranty, I would be calling Apple now.

Yeah, I assumed that, but never hurts to ask.

 

[Sam Posten]

Do you have them sent to iCloud?

 

[DavidJ]

Unfortunately, no. I've always had a large amount o videos and photos, so I didn't bother to set it up on the new phone either.

Any ideas on why the flashlight and camera would've stopped working? Has anyone else run into this?

 

[Sam Posten]

The usual culprit is moisture... You didn't get it wet did you? Either way in situations like this don't sit on it, make an appointment and take it to the Apple Store.

 

[Sam Posten]

Sounds like others are having the issue and getting the phones replaced:https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5327076

 

[DavidJ]

Nope, didn't get it wet or anything. It just stopped working. It had been working fine. I'll be going to the Apple store as soon as I can find the time. I'm kicking myself though. I've had an iPhone since the beginning and this is my first significant loss because I got impatient and decided to roll the dice on an update without backing up first because I couldn't find a cable. Stupid.

 

[Steve Tannehill]

You serve as an excellent reminder to always back up your data. In fact, I will do just that next.

 

[Clinton McClure]

I keep our iPhones backing up to iCloud daily and I perform a manual backup to iTunes about once a month. I've been updating our iOS wirelessly since that functionality was introduced and haven't had an issue.

 

[DavidJ]

I am now backing up to iTunes, but soon will have to much data because of the photos and videos to remain free. I also have it backed up to the computer. I'm 0-1 on wireless updates.

 

[Clinton McClure]

Have you thought about using PhotoStream (or something similar) to sync photos and videos to you computer's hard drive instead of keeping everything on iCould? Doing this, I routinely have less than .5GB of data backing up to iCloud at any time. Basically, everything gets backed up daily to my MacBook Pro (plus regular backups to an external drive) and all I use iCloud for is basic data backup in the event of a critical hardware failure or phone loss, IE: contacts, calendar, notes, etc... In case I have to restore or replace my phone, I don't want to have to download multiple GBs of data from the could while setting it up.

 

[DaveF]

Good recommendation. I rely on PhotoStream for getting my pics to my Mac, generally. But videos aren't copied by PhotoStream. You have to do a wifi or USB sync to get those copied over. (And doing a local sync also is a way to get old photos out of my Camera Roll and off my phone)

 

[DavidJ]

Since I got the replacement, I have turned on Photostream, but like Dave mentioned it doesn't help with backing up videos. Still it would have been better than nothing.

 

[tiffanyyong]

iTunes copies the files to the backup and uses unique file names Windows XP Directory: C: Documents and Settings[username]Application DataApple ComputerMobileSyncBackupWindows Vista/7 Directory: C:UsersUsernameAppDataRoamingApple ComputerMobileSyncBackup For every device you have, there will be a folder for each that keeps your backup. Just rename the file extensions to .jpg and they'll be the original picture images that you can view on your device. If you have it shown in thumbnails, they should change from the broken/corrupted files to an actual image you can open up.

 

[Clinton McClure]

Sorry about that. It slipped my mind that PhotoStream doesn't do videos.