Lost contacts, iPhone 4

I am writing this today as this is the SECOND time in 3 weeks my contacts have been erased. I am FURIOUS!

I don't give a **** if we should be syncing or backing up or what ever else ******** excuse Apple is using. I paid for a product and expect it to operate efficiently and effectively. I have never had an apple product before and never will. Nokia or Samsung never designed phones that would just have a hissy fit and delete all contacts.

Here's a hot tip apple: maybe spend a little more $ getting the simple stuff right. Imagine how ****** off Obama would be if his contacts just erased one day!!!

I've had my iPhone 4s for a little over 6 months, and yesterday was the 3rd (or 4th) time it did this to me. I do not see why I must "sync" or backup or whatever the option is to my contacts with itunes when something is obvioulsy wrong with my phone - same sympthoms everybody else mentions.

I'm running IOS 5 becuase everybody in my job complained about 6 draining battery life, so I was a little unsure about the upgrade, but I also don't think this is the reason.

My sister has another iphone 4s with the exact same features purchased at the same time as mine and it has NEVER done this. That phone constantly falls, gets wet etc and yet it works better than mine. I read somewhere this was a common issue, and many folks were getting replacements from apple or their phone company depending on where they bought them... but I just haven't had the time to check... 😟

Well, this happened to me too, just now. And whats worse I did not even have any backup of my contacts(don't ask why). So what I managed to do is hack my way back to my contacts through Viber! 🙂

Viber app uploads your contacts to their servers and it stays there in case you install it on some other phone/platform.

So what I did is install Viber on a Windows PC (Probably would work very simillar on Mac).

I then went to:

C:\Documents and Settings\<MY USERNAME>\Application Data\ViberPC\<MY PHONE NUMBER>\

(Note: Application Data folder is hidden by Windows defaults. You need to enable: Show hidden files and folders in Tools > Folder Options > View)

In that folder there is a file named:

viber.db

Which is actually a sqlite database. I then went to:

http://www.sqlite.org/download.html

And I downloaded: sqlite-shell-win32-x86-3071700.zip (That is the latest precompiled binary for Windows that was there). I've unzipped it and I copied viber.db in the same folder. Then I launched the command line (Start > Run > cmd) and navigated to that folder. Then typed the following:

sqlite3.exe viber.db

And once it started, I've entered the following SQL query to get the contacts:

SELECT ContactRelation.Number, Contact.FirstName, Contact.SecondName FROM Contact INNER JOIN ContactRelation ON Contact.ContactID = ContactRelation.ContactID ORDER BY Contact.FirstName;

I hope this helps someone! As I know very well how frustrating it can be to loose all your contacts.

this has now happened 3 days in a row. I back up from icloud, all my contacts come back, then throughout the day my contacts disappear!!

i thien go through the same process of restoring from a backup.....now really starting to annoy me!!!

what are you doing about it APPLE!!

I have a iPhone 3GS running 5.1.1 I too had the issue on June 26th where the msg app would open to a white screen then crash, tried other apps and same thing, would open to a white screen and crash back to the home screen. Did a hard restart and same thing as everyone else, numbers show up for history in phone and msgs and all contacts gone! Very frustrating! Work on a fire department and had lots of emergency contacts. Had one person say they just had the same problem they where told it was a conflict with the Facebook app!

It's not a confilct with the facebook app... It's the relationship between 5.1.1 and iCloud. This is why Apple encourages everyone to keep up to date on their iOS to avoid known conflicts such as this one. A golden rule to live by is backup bi-weekly to iCloud and iTunes. And always keep up to date on iOS so that way when something goes wrong it really will be Apple's fault haha. Sorry about the data loss though always is a bummer.

This happened to my wife a few months ago and she wound up getting a new phone. Now it's happening to mine as well. The folks at the apple store were not very helpful, and didn't seem to acknowledge lots of people are having this issue. That's a little disappointing. The helper told my wife if she had the cloud it wouldn't happen. What if I don't want the cloud?

I got the feeling they didn't know what was going on. Just restored my phone and am now upgrading the OS to see if that helps. Hope it does, I don't really have the cash to upgrade at the moment.

I just had the same thing happen on my iphone 4, with ios 5.1.1. Had some difficulties keeping apps open, each time I tried, they would shut down. Restarted phone, and found all contacts dumped.

Read through the first few pages of this thread, and saw one person had success at going through iTunes and going a system restore. I followed same steps she did...

1. Saved all pix to my computer in case they got lost.

2. Attached phone to computer (windows, not macbook).

3. Stopped it from syncing my phone with itunes.

4. Did system restore: File menu, Devices, Restore from Backup

The restore took a long time, but be patient. It worked. Got all contacts back.

Now that you've got the contacts back a smart move would be to sync with iCloud and then update your iOS to make sure you don't have to do it again!

I just did!

Ever since I had my iPhone wiped due to updating to iOS 6, I started making sure myiphone contacts are always backed up to my computer, so I don't depend on iTunes to restore my contacts. To back up and then to restore my contacts to my iPhone I use copytrans contacts.

I also lost all my contacts recently and tried unsuccessfully to retrieve them. Today I've arrived in uk and purchased another SIM card from different provider and spookily all my contacts have now reappeared back on my phone :)

What's going on Apple? All my contacts suddenly disappeared. The useless dweebs you call "geniuses" told me to restore from iTunes backup to recover my contact information. This has not fixed my problem. I don't think you quite understand the magnitude of this issue. It's a total dealbreaker for myself and many others. I couldn't give a flying f@#k if all my games and other novelty apps vanished into thin air but JUST my contacts...ALL OF THEM!!

What the **** is this? My last iPhone was replaced three times due to failure and now my iPhone 4 is failing also. This is beyond ridiculous! I spent over $3800.00 on a MacBook Pro and nearly $1000.00 on my latest iPhone and yet the MOST IMPORTANT FUNCTION of the device has failed miserably. This unacceptable failure has so far cost me $22,000 in lost business and made me look like an amateur and a fool. How can such a fundamental f@#k up not be your most urgent priority.

If this issue is not addressed to my satisfaction I will never spend another cent on Apple products. Just try to imagine the chaos that has resulted from this debacle. It is literally unfathomable and if I weren't such a nice bloke I'd visit your store and smash everything in it with a baseball bat. The thing is, your crappy, overpriced, unreliable junk would be just as useless intact, or in a thousand pieces. FIX IT!!! NOW!!!

I suggest you guys open up a gmail account and save your contact list with your gmail account and sync it with your phone. You will never loose your contacts again and they will be available to get over the net.

I used to have an iphone but they are letting me down year after year.. I have a Samsung Galaxy Nexus right now and I would not return back to iphone.

Well. I haven't had any issues with losing contacts lately, but I have another issue now. Not sure if it stems from this one. Now when I try to make a phone call, the phone automatically shows that it is in speaker phone mode. It says ( calling... ) and just stays like that for 30 seconds or so. Then it starts the counter for the supposedly connected call. I can't hear anything, nor can the person on the other line. The volume does not work either. It seems like another bug. Then after resetting the phone, resetting the network, pulling the SIM, it started to finally work. After repeating those steps multiple times, which may or may not have helped at all. Then my call finally connects. I'm talking for about 1 minute and then the phone goes black screen and no sound... I have to reset it again. This has happened 3 times in the past week and a half. I'm really sick of these bugs. It's pretty much apple's way of making you upgrade to iOS6 I suppose. I give up, I'm upgrading right now. This is unacceptable.