Problem with iCloud Backup - Long story

Hi,

I am asking this question for a friend of mine.

She had a bit of a problem with her iPhone X and making a backup in iCloud.

So here's what happened.

A while ago her screen broke so she went to a carrier store (Vodafone) to make an appointment to get her screen fixed. The staff suggested to make a backup before sending the phone so none of her data got lost in case of a problem.

FYI: She didn't use "iCloud photos" so there's nothing in the cloud.

For some reason her phone turned off and the backup was never finished. Not exactly sure why the phone turned off but it wasn't ment to happen.

She immediately turned the phone back on but it wouldn't start up.

The phone only showed an apple logo and nothing else, it wasn't really a bootloop because the phone never tried to reboot itself.

Turning it off and back had no effect, the same thing would happen.

She panicked and had no idea what to do.

Here's where I come into play.

Because I understand iOS like my back pocket and helped others in the past I tried everything I could.

I used iTunes (or with the Catalina update: Finder) to try to restore the phone.

I placed the phone multiple times in DFU mode or Recovery Mode but non of that worked.

It at some point tried to fix the software but after about 25% the loading bar stopped (on the phone), iTunes gave an error message and it would not load any further.

When unplugging the phone it would restart and got stuck like in the beginning.

When we checked her iCloud storage I saw that one of the backups took up about 35GB of storage, this gave us some hope.

I then tried somethings I wouldn't normally do: third party software to either restore the phone OR download the unfinished iCloud backup of the data. We were hoping out of her photo's would still be in the backup.

Again, unfortunately the third party programs also had no result.

I tried everything I could for about 4 days but sadly had to give up.

The phone right now is repaired and I think the motherboard is replaced too.

Because there are two different IMEI numbers registered within her Apple ID.

Right now I am still trying to download the iCloud backup from her account.

I tried several third party programs but none of them worked.

This last software I tried called "iMyfone D-Back" did show a backup from an "Unknown" device with an "Unknown" size.

So the backup, or at least 35 GB of it, is still there and takes up space of her iCloud account.

How can I get this backup off of her account to restore the data and free up space in her iCloud.

If anyone has any suggestions please let us know, I am desperate to find out what has happened and what is left in this backup.

Thanks.