I lost my old iphone 4s and got a warranty replacement iphone 4s. However when I tried to restore a recent backup I made to the cloud it said that I could not do it because the old backup was on an older ios and the new phone was on a new ios. Is there any way that I can somehow restore this backup? Also I don't have any backups to itunes.
iPhone 4S
You must have read the error message incorrectly. You can always restore a backup to a device running a newer version of iOS than the device that was backed up. If your replacement phone is running the same or newer version of iOS as your old phone, you can restore the backup as explained here: iCloud: Restore your iOS device from iCloud. If it isn't, update it to the latest iOS and then restore the backup.
When it says CHOOSE BACKUP and under LATEST IPHONE BACKUP it has August 12,2014 and under that iphone (ios 7.1.2 Required) but this is all in grey and cannot be clicked on. On the bottom it says "No icloud backups are compatible with the version of ios (7.04) on this iphone" Should I set it up as new phone, update the phone, delete the content, and then restore the latest backup?
Yes, as mentioned you can't restore a backup made on a device running iOS 7.1.2 to a device running a lower version of iOS such as 7.0.4. So you are correct: you should set it up as a new device, update it to 7.1.2, then you can restore the backup as explained here: iCloud: Restore your iOS device from iCloud.
Cant restore icloud backup
