Wiping memory on broken phone with no display

Question

Level 1

25 points

Wiping memory on broken phone with no display

I recently dropped my iphone 4 in water. It seems to work to some extent, but the display is shot. It basically looks blank although every once in a while you can see a little something if the light hits it just right. Anyway, I received a replacement phone and now I have to send the broken one back, but I would like to remove my data and restore it to original settings before I mail it. Is there any way to do this without the display? I tried Find My iPhone in iCloud but it only finds the replacement phone. I think that when I activated the new phone, it made the old phone unable to be found.

iPhone 4

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 7:16 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

traceur333

Level 2

249 points

Oct 23, 2013 7:29 PM in response to smac7

Connect your iPhone to iTunes and put the iPhone into DFU mode. Do this by pressing and holding both the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button for 10 seconds. At this point the screen will turn black, and the iPhone will appear to be off. Continue holding just the Home button at this point.

Itunes will then recognise that you have a phone in recovery mode and it will display your phone info. Click restore to reset to factory settings.

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Answer 2

Jun 3, 2017 9:02 PM in response to smac7

Hi, I have this question too....but my iphone is getting a 2006 error on my mac and a 2009 error on Windows. If I knew that it was already wiped, then, I'm OK, but how do I know? Is there anyway to wipe it and not update it? It's not connected to iCloud anymore, so I can't do it from there either! 😕 Please help! Thanks!

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Answer 3

smac7 Author

Level 1

25 points

Oct 25, 2013 3:59 AM in response to traceur333

Thank you for taking the time to help! I wasn't able to try this because out of no where yesterday afternoon my display-less phone started beeping because Find My iPhone found it. I quickly logged onto iCloud and erased my phone.

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Answer 4

Oct 25, 2013 6:14 AM in response to smac7

Awesome. Glad it was resolved. Good luck with the new phone.

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Answer 5

Feb 23, 2014 9:22 PM in response to traceur333

Thank you traceur333.

You saved me

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Answer 6

Craig DM

Level 1

28 points

Jun 4, 2014 7:38 PM in response to traceur333

Saved me too, traceur333. Two days of frustration wiped away! You do, indeed, rock.

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Answer 7

Dec 20, 2014 12:34 AM in response to smac7

Hi, in case Traceur's response isn't clear to people I just posted a video on how to do this here - http://youtu.be/rdsQOz7ZJw4?list=UU1sQjHDmmWbPjrR5azYVJfQ

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Answer 8

VonSox

Level 1

0 points

Nov 25, 2015 8:52 AM in response to traceur333

Thank you so much, now we can sell my daughter's iPhone with a broken screen to help towards the cost of a second-hand one! 🙂🙂🙂

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Answer 9

Dec 23, 2015 4:16 PM in response to smac7

Thanks for the answer, really helped me with my hubbies broken phone 🙂

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Answer 10

22573264

Level 1

4 points

Mar 8, 2016 12:46 AM in response to traceur333

What do you do if this doesn't work?

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Answer 11

muhavare

Level 1

0 points

Mar 8, 2016 4:50 AM in response to 22573264

Thank you so much, I also need to clean all my personal data and idioms from my broken phone before sending that to the store.

It was helpful, Thanks.

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Answer 12

dubb1

Level 1

4 points

Mar 29, 2016 7:29 AM in response to smac7

In my case i also have the Sleep-Wake button broken so i guess i can do it trough ´find my iPhone´ on iCloud

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Answer 13

CaeRT706

Level 1

12 points

Apr 9, 2017 6:35 AM in response to traceur333

can you help me too? my iphone is still locked and i tried to put a sim card on it, but it turned out just displaying the apple logo. I cant do anything with it

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Answer 14

madiha19

Level 1

4 points

Aug 30, 2017 3:39 PM in response to tokyochris123

in my case its showing itunes is downloading the softare for your iphone to restore! and its a being software is not yet downloaded what to do! my iphone is smashed!

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Answer 15

klsat

Level 1

4 points

Aug 31, 2017 7:44 AM in response to traceur333

This didn't work for me as I got an error about an update that could not happen. How can I do the update?

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