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pardthemonster Author

Level 4

1,165 points

iCloud Restore for iPhone 6s - Missing Messages/Recent Calls Missing

Day one my wife and I got our new iPhone 6s (with iOS 9.0). We did an iCloud restore from our iPhone 5s with iOS 9.0.1 and it was successful bringing all our data including Messages and Recent Calls. The phones were then updated to iOS 9.0.1. Everything was working fine...

My phone had an issue which ended up getting me a replacement iPhone 6s (iOS 9.0). From here I tried restoring from the past iPhone 6s (with iOS 9.0.1) iCloud restore. Unfortunately, Messages and Recent Calls did not come over from the past iPhone 6s backup and I even tried various of the iPhone 6s time stamped backups. I also updated the new iPhone 6s to 9.0.2 and still no difference with the restore. It wasn't until I reverted back to my iPhone 5s backup (iOS 9.0.1) that it would bring the Messages and Recent Calls over. Note that the inclusion of the Messages and Recent Calls is evident immediately after the initial restart from restore (when the phone starts downloading apps). This has me worried going forth and here is why!

I've done a new backup and a little digging. I've noticed that both my new backup for the iPhone 6s and wife's are both smaller than our iPhone 5s backup was. Example for my device backups: iPhone 5s: 18 GB, iPhone 6s: 17.1 GB. Note that this seems backwards as if there was any difference for whatever reason, I would imagine that it be on the larger resolution device. Also, this difference in size would seem reasonable for not including Messages (includes messages, videos, audio, etc.) and Recent Calls. There may even be other data that this did not bring over as I did not see it benefit in losing years of messages for a week of new data, i.e. I did not research the loss to the full extent.

Has anyone else experienced this issue recently with an iPhone 6s or maybe there is a known issue I just have not stumbled across.

iPhone 6s, iOS 9.0.2

Posted on Oct 3, 2015 5:37 AM

Top-ranking reply

Letapa

Level 1

0 points

Posted on Oct 13, 2015 4:28 PM

I Spent 6 hours with the geniuses and no one thinks this is a big issue!!!!

not sure if you noticed, but after a restore where all your messages are gone, if you do get new messages, you will not get notified, they will not be in chronological order, if you get multiple messages, the order doesn't change, and most importantly, if you turn your phone off and back on, all those messages will be erased. (this last part they "fixed" by resting settings)

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198 replies

lmart

Level 1

0 points

Nov 13, 2015 11:03 AM in response to habitant1

The most I get from my Senior Advisor is that the engineering team has acknowledged receipt of my ticket.

They've avoided directly answering my questions of when we can expect a response. They've also avoided my suggestion to do something other than simply submit a ticket. I've suggested they work around their support procedures and "think differently" about how they can get more information to us.

I've submitted emails to Tim Cook, the Apple support twitter account and will soon be contacting Apple media to suggest they might have a pretty big story on their hands. All these iPhone6s people may have upgraded without any issues, but if they drop their phone in the toilet and have been backing up to icloud, they're going to be losing a lot of data.

RackEm8

Level 1

0 points

Nov 16, 2015 5:28 PM in response to pardthemonster

This happened to me as well. I started a case with Apple last Thursday.

These seem to be the conditions:

It seems to happen when going from a 6S backup to another 6S - not sure about Plus
When restoring from backup, during the part with the white screen and black apple logo w/ progress bar, there is a brief flash and then the progress bar goes away. It does not continue and must be hard power cycled to get out of. It appears to continue fine but then displays a few symptoms.
Symptoms include: losing messages, losing keyboard autocorrects, some photos gone, most apps (~50% for me) will crash and need to be reinstalled.

These are the other threads I had seen on this:

iCloud Restore for iPhone 6s - Missing Messages/Recent Calls Missing

9.0.2 backup restore issue.

I imagine this problem hasn't gotten much steam because the number of 6S to 6S restores is low, but maybe it only happens to a few select cases. I will post more if I get a reply from Apple.

Surfer01

Level 1

8 points

Nov 16, 2015 5:56 PM in response to RackEm8

Wow that is exactly what happened to my phone.

gretrick

Level 1

4 points

Nov 17, 2015 6:04 AM in response to Surfer01

Exactly the same problem.I lost all messages.

muon25

Level 1

4 points

Nov 17, 2015 7:02 AM in response to gretrick

I had a similar problem yesterday when restoring my 6s iCloud backup to a warranty replacement. In addition to messages, I lost all Health data and Apple Watch activity. Luckily I had a recently done an encrypted backup to iTunes and restored from that. If I hadn't had the iTunes backup I'd have lost months of data.

muon25

Level 1

4 points

Nov 17, 2015 7:05 AM in response to muon25

I had a similar problem yesterday when restoring my 6s iCloud backup to a warranty replacement. In addition to messages, I lost all Health data and Apple Watch activity. Luckily I had recently done an encrypted backup to iTunes and restored from that. If I hadn't had the iTunes backup I'd have lost months of data.

duck1098

Level 1

9 points

Nov 17, 2015 1:58 PM in response to muon25

Go to Setting, General, Storage&iCloud Usage, Manage Storage, you'll see that the messages are taking up a big chunk of date so that tells me that they're somewhere in the phone still. I really hope the media picks this up and they lose a bunch of money for this. I'm using this garbage for my business like a lot of people so its crucial for me to get my messages back.

Has anyone tried backing up the faulty 6s phone to iTunes and then restore from iTunes?

iSchack

Level 1

9 points

Nov 17, 2015 2:33 PM in response to duck1098

That's what's giving me hope, too. in the storage settings I'm seeing 911 MB of messages data. My hope is that apple will make those messages accessible again with iOS 9.2 which should be out soon...

pardthemonster Author

Level 4

1,165 points

Nov 17, 2015 2:43 PM in response to duck1098

http://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/15/11/16/iphone-6s-owners-report-losing- messages-recent-calls-when-restoring-fro…

duck1098

Level 1

9 points

Nov 17, 2015 3:28 PM in response to pardthemonster

Well the moron that opened the case for me had no clue.

Nov 17, 2015 7:01 PM in response to duck1098

"Has anyone tried backing up the faulty 6s phone to iTunes and then restore from iTunes?"

hey, that's a good idea! someone try this!

duck1098

Level 1

9 points

Nov 17, 2015 8:31 PM in response to soundslikebliss

I tried it. No dice...

Nov 17, 2015 10:37 PM in response to pardthemonster

I just use the iTunes backup to restore and update to 9.1. It works.

Make sure your iCloud storage has enough space and iCloud not backup all information on your iPhone. Here is iCloud backup content.

You can also turn on or turn off photo library and other app data on iPhone iCloud setting.

Update your iOS version to the latest 9.1 or restore from iTunes backup will be a good choice to avoid this issue.

And here are some solutions to fix it when it happened on your iPhone 6S/6S plus

iSchack

Level 1

9 points

Nov 17, 2015 11:28 PM in response to JazzMan1982

Just to get this right, before wasting hours of wipeing/restoring my iPhone 6s: You took the iPhone 6s with the "incomplete" iCloud Backup restore, backed it up to iTunes, wiped the iPhone 6s and restored it from iTunes, right?

iSchack

Level 1

9 points

Nov 18, 2015 1:21 AM in response to iSchack

I couldn't wait and gave it shot. For me, it didn't work.

Also, I'm still having this weird issue, where I'm no longer getting notified of new iMessages/SMS. Neither on the iPhone, nor on the Apple Watch. However, it still works perfectly finde on both, the Mac and the iPad.

iCloud Restore for iPhone 6s - Missing Messages/Recent Calls Missing