Lost contacts and photos after restore
my son has an iPhone 4G that is about a year old. He never synced or backed it up but continually added photos and contacts. He was having problems with hardware so I suggested he back up and restore. I did this and of course had to update iTunes and the version on his phone from 4.3 (I think) to 5.0.1. I don't know what happened after after the back up and restore, but now his settings, text messages and contacts are all gone. All contacts were on the phone and not in an email contact folder. Same with photos, they were on the phone, but never synced up with a computer until I did the back up right before restoring. I have restored my phone and my wifes without losing anything. I don't understand why it did not work on my son's phone. Is there any way to recover the contacts. All apps and music did transfer because I was prompted to transfer purchases before updating the software on the phone. If the sync and/or back up did not take and the phone was restored, is there any way to recover the contacts? Is there a contact file from the back up somewhere on the computer where these files can be retrieved? I found some software programs that claim to be able retrieve these files from the sqlite file (or some similar sounding file) but I don't trust them and want to know more about options from Apple first.
iPhone 4, iOS 5.0.1