Missing pictures and videos in Photos from specific timeperiod

since update to iOS17.4 my iPhone 12 has been unresponsive a few times.

This issue is about lost photos and videos. In particular all taken between Wednesday 13/03/2024 17:00 & Thursday 14/03/2024 13:00. 

In that timeperiod I did take photos and videos (few were sent through whatsapp, so they were effectively taken, and when downloaded now from out of WhatsApp they do appear in right time/spot in Photos).

when I do a ‘Search’ in Photos e.g. “Vatican city” (I was in the vatican at this time), it says “79 Photos”, but I only see like 10… “See All” also does not give me more pictures.

All photos taken in that timeperiod are nowhere to be found, not in ‘hidden’, not in ‘recently deletet’, not behind any ‘Filters’. They also did not re-appear after a restart. It is a complete gap in my Photos, like they were never even taken. 

My iCloud (Photos) Sync is/was enabled, I do/did have enough storage left, BackUps were/are on, …

I did a force restart on the iPhone somewhere in that timeperiod, due to phone being completely unresponsive (tap volume up, tap volume down, hold lock button till Apple logo appears). When the iPhone turned on, I did see some “error” lile ‘Mobile Data not able to…’ but phone functioned normal again afterwards.

Chances are that those files were not able to Sync to iCloud due to unresponsiveness of the iPhone and the later Netwerk error? Is there any way that these files can be recovered? they were taken/shot and were effectively in ‘Photos’ during a certain time (since I sent few through whatsapp), just did not sync? were ‘lost’ after reset?)

anyone else with this problem and possible solution?

I already had contact with Apple Support by Chat and Phone but they can’t really do anything other than try restore from their servers (this didn’t do anything, because photos were never uploaded to icloud I think)