iPhone 4 Contacts Disappeared After Receiving Text Message

see I tried the import sim contacts as well but was annoyed to find out that it hasn;t even been saving my contacts to the sim. Like every other phone should do. Piece of crap.. another thing that the iphone doesn't do >.<

Ended up with ancient contacts from my old Nokia N95 😟

For some reason all my contacts are gone from itunes as well.. I might have them on my old hard drive but where are the contacts kept? I don't use Outlook OR Windows Mail so where?? Also never used icloud.

Same Issue Iphone 4s model md241c 5.1.1 9b206

I restored from my itunes synch but the contacts did not appear immediately. Only after going into Iphone-> utilities->Contacts did I see all my contacts again. When I went back into Phone->Contacts they were all there.

Back up often folks, with the ease of itunes wifi sync there is little reason not to.

Bern

Be careful folks. A backup is NOT the same as a sync. I sync at least once a week but it's not the same as doing a manual backup. Be aware that doing a manual backup on a regular basis will save you in the future. I wish I had known this and done this but I didn't and now I'm paying for it :-(

Yeah I agree with you Kandi, Sadly, whenever I try to backup lately it gets almost done and then says the Iphone was Disconnected. Thinking it might be the cable but I think I saw a way to backup via wifi.WIll do that in future.

Same problem.

I tried opening Messages and the app crashed everytime so I rebooted and then the next day I noticed all my iPhone contacts were gone.

I'm running iOS 5.1.1 on an iPhone 4.

Good one Apple. Microsoft was never able to screw me over so elegantly.

Same here. iPhone 4, iOS 5.1.

Kakao app kept crashing, rebooted, got a text, all contacts gone except some numbers (in favorites and recent texts/calls). Other than that, nothing different regarding usage of phone.

Tried all the methods suggested in this forum, nothing worked. Didn't have iCloud and never sync'd (I don't even have iTunes on my computer), never felt the need. Why would contacts just disappear?? Regardless of whether you have iCloud or which version your iPhone has?!?!?!??! Contacts from old flip phones never disappear unless you smash it.

Very disappointed with iPhone. Def going to Samsung is my solution to this problem that Apple will NOT address OR fix.

Any electronic device can lose data, data backup is essential. To assume that another device is not going to lose data is naive at best. The synch with Itunes/Icloud provides a simple and painless way to backup your data over wifi. The alternative is to manually back up your phone with another third party app. Cut off your nose to spite your face if you will, but why make your life harder?

This appears to be a software/hardware bug that apple needs to fix given the number of users effected.

My wife's Iphone 4s has experienced the same issue. She had been texting with a friend, then the phone froze and when she did a hard reboot it came back with no contacts. We've synched and restored from a backup without success. iCloud has never been used, no other accounts (ie. gmail, hotmail). Tried importing from sim card, the homescreen search idea, as well as adding one of the contacts - still no change. Even tried the 'mycontact backup' program and that didn't work either. She has started manually re-entering her contacts one by one.

It's unfortunate because this is just one on top of a list of hassles that on their own wouldn't be a huge issue, but are slowly turning us away from being an Apple family.

Thanks Bernie. While backing up and sync'ing are obvious things to do, if you read all the threads in this forum, some people have recommended against using iCloud and another third app to back up your contacts. It seems when you sync it messes up your contacts from time to time if you have used these programs. My point is that these are not reliable programs that apple has created -iCloud, iPhone- with no resolution, or no backup for the backup. But how many backups does a PHONE need to have??? It's a phone! What's the main purpose of a phone? To hold contact info and allow the user to call using the numbers. All the others are extra. If your contacts disappear and your phone still has games and music, your phone has failed. iPhone has failed.

It's true that other smart devices have bugs. None are perfect. But I haven't heard this same complaint caused by other smart phones. Use bb before iPhone and currently still at work, have not had this problem. None of friends who have Samsung or htc (droid) have expressed this same problem. Some friends who have iPhones DID have the same problem I did.

Keeping your iPhone? Best "back up" is wiring down all your 300+ contacts in a notebook.

Be advised. Good luck.

I've been watching this thread for a few days hoping I could find a solution then realized that if I didn't post my "me too" it wouldn't help anyone realize there's a larger problem here (which ought to be obvious from the 100k+ views!) iPhone 4s, iOS 5.1.1 (9B206). I had contact names but the phone kept closing everything immediately. Closed all apps, hard reset, managed to get into settings and the app center and updated facebook, then turned off for the night. Next morning the contact names were gone.

I don't like being pushed into things like Apple seems to do, in this case the iOS upgrade - I haven't been willing to concede to it yet because I like having the maps. I installed Google maps to get used to it and go ahead with the update, then reports of problems with iOS 6 came out so I waited some more and now Apple does something, either giving Facebook/programmers access it shouldn't have or just plain 'ol Apple did it, and contacts are gone with barely any user action yet only for the people with the old iOS.

Is it annoying but not life ending, yes, and yes, I do I have a backup, but what I don't get - why would I beat myself up over it and do backflips trying to fix it? I didn't do this, I wasn't even using the thing. I also don't care if I did or didn't backup, and neither should anyone else. Outrage and finger pointing shouldn't be towards the users who don't have contacts because they didn't back up the primary thing a phone is supposed to do. I've never even had a cell phone, in 10 years, lose contacts. This is an Apple problem, a problem that reflects the culture and approach Apple is taking towards it's mobile devices and the users. A customer can either pay for Apple to support the problem created by them that they reportedly respond is un-fixable or beg for help on a forum that Apple provides but won't take responsibility for addressing the issues reported? That's disgraceful.

And now I'm about to embark on following some helpful soul's detailed description of how they fixed it on their phone and see if it works where all the other things I've tried didn't. Each time getting more and more disgusted with this stupid phone.

One thing I want to be clear on is I am in no way abdicating Apple of their responsibilities. The contacts should not disappear. In my case the bug occurred after applications began to freeze or automatically close. This seems to be a relatively consistent sympton prior to the contacts disappearing. Apple should be working on a fix for this and communicating their progress.

Rectifying the problem for me was quite simple on my Iphone.

As Jimmy Page says

Cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,

When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.

My iPhone 4s on iOS 5.1.1 did the same thing to me. All apps started to crash, turn OFF and ON the device, all Contacts gone. Don't know when I last backed up the contacts.

Can the apple geniuses please provide some remedy for this?

Thanks

I'm using the iPhone4 ver. 4.3.3, my Whatsapp suddenly hang after received a message then all contacts disappear! I've tried to reboot it few times but no help at all. Never tried to backup the contact list to iTunes. Please anyone can help and fix this out?

Thanks!

I have had almost the exact same thing happen to me (in the Middle East). And my sister had the same thing happen to her in another part of the world. Dont know if this is somehow related to Whatsapp or to apple...

Almost surely nothing to do with carrier.

i have resigned myself to having a partial list available from backup.

Hello,

I had this problem also. I called Apple Support about this and this is what they answered me :

- First, we cannot do anything if you doesn't update your firmware to the last version. This bug is surelly corrected in the new version of OS

- You must synchronise your Iphone's data if you don't want to loose your data when this kind of problem happend.

- If you update your os and following by synchonise your contacts, you will fix your problem.

It is what I did and everything is now A1 until 4 days.

Finally this problem is owned by the person who didn't backup their iphone until lot of time.

If you have done this, this problem didn't be catastriphic.

Good luck!!!

Same issue with my wife's phone.

It just randomly deleted all her contacts.

I'd have to think they are still there in the device, i don't want to mess with it too much.

she does not sync contacts with icloud, never hooks it up to itunes.

Any advice?

whenever she gets this straightened out my advice would be to buy a samsung!

it's pathetic that apple's response to this is to blame the customer.

how about blame your crappy product?

i've NEVER seen this happen on any android device.