Lost contacts, iPhone 4

i tried using this dr fone software a while ago it recovered my contacts then they all disappeared again, i ended up using other software by enigma recovery

I have the same problem as you guys also. i am using I phone 4 with IOS5. Apps crashed then i turn off and on the phone. After turn it on, all the contacts gone. Happened for several times already. Need help here to solve this problem. I seldom synced my phone to i tunes. Anyone can help me here. I am really frusted of my phone already. Do i need to buy a new phone?

Carrot you do not need a new device. You are running an version of iOS that is outdated. They are almost on iOS 7.... Your solution is to UPDATE YOUR PHONE. If you are all up to date and you randomly lose info who knows maybe Apple could give you something for the pain and suffering. But when you aren't up to date it is just YOUR FAULT.

For people who don't update because of Google Maps you just aren't paying attention. It's available on iOS 6 from the app store.

- Bobby B

Greetings all,

This has been a frustrating and on- going situation for many of you. I have been looking and reading into fixing the solution but it would seem that everytime I think its ok, the contacts go missing again. Since July 24, I haven't had a single issue yet and I had noted a few changes I made to my phone. I would like to see if maybe this will help some of you so I will go ahead and list what I did. First and foremost, I did these steps after I had lost my contacts so I had to restore back to my backup that I had. I am going to assume that you will do the same thing or at least already have a backup to protect yourself in case something goes wrong. Now then, once you have restored or ready to beging I went to the following, tap on Settings> Location Services > and then scroll down to system services. I went ahead and turned everything off except for "Setting Time Zone." Once that is done, I went back to location settings and I turned everything off except for my "Weather Channel App" and my "Maps" for Location services. I realize some people might use more than this, but I invite you to try it so we can narrow down a solution perhaps. Now since everyone has had this problem on 5.1 or 5.1.1 and its effecting iPhone 4/4s users, I assume (like others have stated as well) that its tied to the network. I did not notice these before but the setting "Cell Network Search" and "Diagnostic Usage" could be the cultprit, however like with everything tech this is NOT 100% vaildiated and so its still in trial and error. So far though I have not had an issue, and invite others to see if it fixes the crashing and erasing of the contacts. Also, its is also worth to note that iCloud has been turned off on my phone as well since I was having issues with that so I have been using the computer to backup. Let me know if this at least extends the issue or doesn't fix it so we can rule this out.Let me know this helps anyone.

Also, I would also like to state that for those that reccomending to update to fix the issue, you are not required to update, therefore, you should NOT be forced to update to "fix" anything unless otherwise noted in release notes of a specific issue. Imagine if this were to happen on operating systems for your computer just because you do not update your computer your hard drive gets erased or certain specific data such as our contacts? At one time most of everyone, was on this same version and I NEVER had an issue nor do I recall others having contacts erasing on their on, so its apparent that its being tampered with to force everyone to update. I am sure most on this thread feel the same way becasue we are on older phones and refuse to update to OS 6, and it looks like, judging from the frustration and their refusal to recongnize this problem, they have lost some support because of this.

I have a solution which worked for me:

1. Go to settings, then icloud

2. Turn contacts off - DO NOT delete from iphone when given the option

3. Turn off iphone

4. Turn on iphone

5. Go to settings, then icloud

6. Turn contacts on - DO merge to icloud when given option

7. Contacts should be back

Hopefully this works for you guys.

Good luck :-)

Ditto. Same scenario. Apps would not open which required I reboot the phone. When I did all my Contacts had disappeared.

Apple has done nothing to resolve this issue other than to blame their loyal customers. "Too bad, so sad, ***** to be you."

Ironically my Macbook hard drive died the same week after just two years. I lost everyting. So thank you Apple! You have managed to wipe out my phone and computer in one week!

Of course this has made my decision to not get a new iPhone which I am eligible for with AT&T. There are too many better, more advanced phones on the market to choose from.

Yes, backup you data. True. But I would counter this and say to Apple, make equipment that does not have catastrophic failures.

The solution is to get rid of your iPhone and by an Android. That is what I am going to do.

this is the place i used they give free advice http://www.enigma-recovery.com/smartphone-recovery-pro2/ i got all my deleted messages and contacts and histrory back and more . theres lots of products out there i would research that company before buying to ensure reputationa nd speciality first. goog luck

Have you tried this:

http://download.cnet.com/iPhone-Data-Recovery-for-Mac/3000-18551_4-75882825.html

Can't recommend as I haven't tried it myself, but found in a Google search.

Good luck.

Man I feel you!!! I have an iphone 5 and I woke up yesterday to find all of contacts were gone!! I was like wht the F*%6k!! I too has lost a lot of business and cn't reach my client's unless they call me. This sh*t is un acceptatable!!! I tried to restore them as instructed by using icloud and itunes. That sh*t doesn't work!!! I will be going to social media putting out the word on this over priced dumb phone not smart, on how it can't retain something simple as your contacts!!! F$%k apple and the iphone!! going back to my reliable flip!!

Never mind, I found a great tutorial: http://goo.gl/Mpd9K

Thanks Eric, one of the few people I've seen trying to track down the problem rather than just living with it and using a bandaid fix when it happens. I tried your suggestion and turned of ALL Location Services > System Services. Still have the issue. iPhone 4 on iOS 5.1.1 / jailbroken. I am wondering is this issue happening to jailbroken phones only or is it affecting everyone regardless. Seems to happen most to me when I'm in Facebook or BiteSMS. Rather than restarting the phone, I tried simply re-springing it to see if that would bring me back... Took me into an infiniate loop that I had to hard reset to get out of. I've been using MCBackup to store and restore my contacts when it happens, but I'd really like to figure out what is causing the issue in the first place and simply not have to deal with it.

No problem !! I am glad someone tried my suggestion! Sorry it didn't work, I was really hoping I found the culprit !! I have seen from this thread and doing a few Google searches that the facebook application has come up quite a bit and as for me personally I think out maybe 5 or 6 lockups, I can safely say that 3 or 4 those seem to happen when I access the facebook application or had just exit it and then when I tried to log back in it seems to crash and I have no choice to restart. The last time I had the issue though I was trying to reply to a text message and it just crashed. Though I don't think it's fair to say with a 100% guarantee that it is indeed facebook causing this since it happens on a random occasion. My facebook app version that I am using is 5.4.2. I don't think having a jailbroken phone would have anything to do with it since I have read it was effecting others. I am curious though, did you restore from a previous backup and then turn off all the system services off or did you turn them off and then the problem occurred shortly thereafter? I am thinking maybe that since all of us that are having problems and are affected by the same iOS version that it was sending packets of information (despite carrier) to our phones which seems to cause an abnormal crash. I did noticed though that when I had the problem last time that I noticed in the crash report that there was a kernel error and it showed the CPU trying access contracts. (I wish I would have took a screenshot of it, can't exactly remember what it said 100%).

All in all, if it's not too much trouble and you have a backup of the phone, try and see if you restore it again and then turn off the system services as soon as it comes back up and see if anything changes. When I did mine, I did the restore, and soon as it came back up I actually turned the Wi-Fi because it was downloading iOS and would take up space on my phone. I then turned off all the systems services I mentioned and then I copied my songs back over. The apps were done during the restore itself so I didn't have to worry about those manually. After that, I filled my phone to have its free space under 2.8 GB ( I stuck a movie on it and it dropped to 2.2 GB free space) so that it would not download the next version and unpack itself. I assume since yours was jailbroken it wasn't downloading the new OS but incase it was maybe that was the variable we did differently. I'll try and see if I can replicate the issue by fiddling with the apps and load up its multitasking tray so that way hopefully my contacts get erased again and I'll try my fix again as well as something different. Keep me posted with what you find out. 🙂

If you want to recover your iPhone contacts, you can recover contacts directly from the iPhone and to retrieve previous contats by extracting it from iTunes backup.

You can extract your contacts from the iTunes backup when you lost your iPhone. iTunes can automatically back up your iPhone contacts and update it every time when you sync it. So you really have a big chance to recover contacts from iTunes backup.

Let's check how to recover contacts with or without your iPhone

Part 1: Directly scan and recover contacts from iPhone (with iPhone 5/4S/4/3GS)

Part 2: Scan and extract iTunes backup to recover iPhone contacts (without iPhone)

Part 1: Directly scan and recover contacts from iPhone 5/4S/4/3GS

Step 1: Connect your iPhone to the computer

Step 2: Enter the device's scanning mode and scan it

1) Hold your device and click the "Start" button.

2) Pressing the "Power" and "Home" buttons at the same time for exact 10 seconds.

3) Then release the "Power" button, but keep holding "Home" for another 15 seconds until you get the message of successfully entering.

Whatever the device you use, the program will automatically begin scanning your iPhone for lost contacts after you doing the steps accordingly.

Step 3: Preview and recover iPhone contacts

When the scan is finished, you can preview all found data before recovery. Choose "Contacts" to preview, mark it and click "Recover", you can save all the contents on your computer with one click.

Part 2: Extract iTunes backup to recover iPhone contacts

Step 1: Scan the backup file

Step 2: Recover your iPhone contacts

How iTunes backs up your iPhone contacts

As an iPhone user, who tends to manage the content of iPhone with iTunes, must know that iTunes backs up everything of your iPhone first when you sync with it. This will be the warmest thing when you lost your contacts from iPhone. The bad point is that the backup file is not regular file type, but a SQlitedb file, which is not allowed to preview, even access. Sometimes it's encrypted, just for private safe.

You can read the detailed steps here:

How to Recover iPhone Contacts

I hope it can help you. Good luck!

I posted here months ago when all went wrong. Snce then I have upgraded IOS twice. However, my wife noticed something which may help all of you who have lost your contacts. They DO seem to be buried in the deeper caverns of the phone's memory.

Try doing the following.

Go to the Messages app, and go to create a new message. Make sure this is not a reply to an existing message, but a brand new message.

In the To: window, type just one letter, for example the letter a.

When I do this, my phone then suggests a whole list of contacts who contain the letter 'a', even contacts that I no longer have, i.e. contacts that have been wiped.

I don't think you can 'use' these contacts - you might just have to use pen and paper to write down the details.