Restored from recent backup, yet I am back at initial setup screen?

Okay, even though I googled the crap out of this for 2 hours before daring to waste anyone's time with my question, it took the "more like this" column to highlight this thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4043460?answerId=18703318022#18703318022

In which the person tried setting up as a new phone and "everything came back." So I have one random person's 11 word anecdote that their data was not lost. Why, in attempting to use a product from a company that is built on the highest standards of user interface design, would you be forced to make a complete guess like this and hope your data didn't just go down the tubes?

Is it just a bug? If something went wrong, why wasn't there an error message? I don't believe it could have been intentionally designed that way.

I'm really looking for additional reassurance that this won't wipe my phone and leave me sitting here with my useless overwritten backup.

Love replying to myself.

Here's another person who was in a similar boat and found out that it's a bug. I hope this thread at least helps someone else.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4094634

And another, who confirms they did not lose their data:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2050446?answerId=9680881022#9680881022

I swear to the spaghetti monster that I tried RTFMing and searching the community and did not hit upon the right way to phrase the question. No wonder this thing is clogged with redundant posts that never really get answered.

Okay, with my phone not connected to my computer, I chose Set Up As New iPhone and my data is lost. Notes are gone, to-dos that I had entered in Things are gone... Apps I had purchased are there, though.

"App data" is listed in the things that are supposed to be included in backups. Again, ***.

I don't know if the data was gone before I tried Set Up As New iPhone or not. I am restoring from my only backup.

Me again!

After weeping bitterly, and reading this article, which is old but semi-helpful, http://www.macworld.com/article/1144086/tco_iphoneos3.html

I've decided that what I did was probably a Full Restore (the big button in the middle of the Summary tab) instead of a Backup-Only Restore (the one in the contextual menu when you right-click your iPhone in the sidebar) – I had no idea there were two types of restore. Nothing cheerfully suggesting a restore ("It's easy!") that I had ever read distinguished between the two. But I remember choosing a backup from a dropdown! This is where I have no explanation for what happened.

Regardless, I thought it was fine that I was erasing all the data, because that's what a backup is for, right? Restore from backup? Sounds like your phone will be the way it was before! Too bad that backup was overwritten by a new one of the wiped phone since I had automatic syncing set up. Which I believe is the default, since you have to check an unchecked box to prevent it from happening. This was supposed to make things easy.

I chose to do a Backup-Only Restore using one of my old backups from October. Which were created the last time some BS happened. I have the majority of my notes back, only because I didn't create many after that point up until (newly created) Notes became part of iCloud.

The to-dos in Things are all still gone, after restoring from the backup and also syncing. So I'm not too sure what "app data" means in the list of things that are included in a backup.

And thank the stars I had said "yes" to Dropbox's recent request to sync my photos and videos. I also had Photo Stream running (luckily), but that doesn't take care of videos. There is now nothing in the Camera Roll, even though that is supposed to be included in a backup.

Yeah, I know, back up your important stuff. That's what I thought the effing BACKUP would help with, since I had this data both on my phone and on my computer! Yeah, it's my fault, sure. You got me. But it wasn't supposed to be this easy to screw up. I'm used to robust error and warning systems in user interfaces, so I made the mistake of trusting this process.