iPhone Restore failed: app cannot be found

I was recently cleaning up HDD space on my Mac and came across multiple folders within the iTunes folder, under Mobile Applications.

There were several instances of backed up Apps from mine and my Wife's iPhone, all in all about 6GBs.

I decided to delete them to free up some space I needed, thinking at the time that iTunes would just redownload them if it needed them.

Well, my iPhone went faulty and I received a replacement from my local Apple Store. Upon restoring the backup iTunes failed to restore all the Apps. Not a huge problem I thought as I can just go through the pain of downloading them on my phone manually.

However, 2 bigger issues occured:

1. All the Apps were in a completely random order on my phone, none of the folders had been restored

2. The restore meant that my phone would not answer or make calls, the vibrate function went nuts and would continue for 5 or 6minutes after someone attempted to call me...! WEIRD!

To get my phone functioning as normal, I set it up as "a new phone", as a result I have no camera roll or SMS history which is really annoying!

I tried the restore several times and whilst "successful", my phone would not function correctly.

I wondered if anyone had came across this weird issue of not being able to answer/make calls and when that happens, the phone just vibrates continuously for minutes on end?

Apps can be replaced, but my data can't! Now trying to find out if I can extract my SMS data out of the restore, the camera roll I will transfer to "Photos".

I wait in anticipation for some help 🙂 and will stop deleting files now