I lost my phone and was worried about my photos, I went onto icloud photos and have most my photos up until July and then some photos from september. But most of my photos in summer have been lost. I think it's because I had low storage. Is there anyway there was a sort of safety back up done by icloud that I could access these photos or are they gone for good? Also anyway I can contact apple through chat or email, currently in China so cannot call!
If you run out of iCloud storage, photos taken will not sync to iCloud. So those taken when your storage was insufficient are gone now the device is gone.
Note that nothing gets secretly or quietly backed up when your iCloud storage is full. So incoming emails and messages will also be rejected and lost. Backups cannot complete so your backup either becomes obsolete or worse, corrupted and unusable.
Full iCloud storage is really no different than a full hard drive on your computer. Without storage for new files and data, things simply fail and are lost.
If the photos are only on the lost device, they are gone.
Icloud Photos Recovery
