Updated iphone software and lost all photos and contacts

Your contacts and pics are not on your computer?

You should be syncing with your computer regularly and certainly before an update.

Just sync them back to your iphone from your computer.

A very similar thing has happened to me. Luckily I had moved all my photos to my PC a few days before, but when I updated to 4.01 I lost ALL my contacts and all my apps. And, no they are not on my PC.

iTunes reported that it had backed up my phone before installing the new OS. And, it reported that it was restoring files from the backup after updating. Clearly this wasn't true. The phone was not disconnected or otherwise interrupted during update.

Any practical suggestions would be very gratefully received.

Message was edited by: Kingers

For apps:
If the apps were downloaded directly to the iphone but never transferred to itunes via the File pulldown menu, you can re-download the apps for free using the same account as the original purchase. Just remember to transfer them next time.

For the photos:
If they were on the camera roll, and are now missing, you can either restore the iphone from a previous backup of the iphone to 'recover' the photos or count them as a loss. If they were on albums other than the camera roll, they are on your syncing computer.