Dropped my old 16GB iPhone 5S and it stopped working. Picked up a used 32GB iPhone 5S and tried to restore it with an iCloud backup of my old phone. It said I needed an updated version of iOS, but I didn't know about setting it up as a new iPhone, downloading the latest iOS, wiping the phone, and THEN restoring it; found that article about three days too late. I can't remember exactly how my first attempt went down, but I vaguely remember getting some sort of pop-up saying that I needed to update my iOS, and I think I just downloaded the new iOS (9.3.3) somewhere during the setup before starting the restore. About 25% into the restore, with about 45 minutes left, I ran out of time and ended up having to leave. The restore said that it didn't complete because it lost the wifi signal, but I just figured that I would start over when I got home.
Later that night, when I tried to restore from the same iCloud backup, it began the restore and estimated the time remaining at 14 hours. I thought, "Okay, well, that's a lot longer than the first time," but figured that maybe the internet was just slow at the moment and it would speed up in the middle of the night when no one else was using the internet. I left it overnight.
Ten hours later, I woke up (hey, it's summer), and there was no progress on the restore. Estimated time remaining was still 14 hours and there was no discernible progress on the progress bar. Ever since then, every attempt to restore from an iCloud backup has had the same result: an endlessly hanging restore. I've been trying to get it to update for about four days now; the only difference is that the time remaining sometimes says 13 hours instead of 14, but it hangs just the same.
I have tried:
- Restarting the phone
- Factory resetting the phone
- Booting in recovery mode
- Restoring from iOS 9.3.2, setting up the phone as a new iPhone, updating the iOS, wiping the phone, and then restoring
- Restoring from iOS 9.3.2 and trying the iCloud restore (same situation as when I initially tried to set up the phone)
- Restoring from a different iCloud backup
- Restoring from an iTunes backup, wiping the phone, and then trying to restore from the iCloud backup
Restoring from the iTunes backup was successful, but the problem is that this backup is almost two years old because I normally only back up to iCloud. I have data from the last iCloud backup of my old phone that I would just hate to lose.
One last thing: my old iPhone was a GSM-unlocked phone, formerly from AT&T, that had been purchased in America. My new used phone was most likely purchased either here in the Czech Republic, where I currently reside, or in Russia (the girl who sold me the phone was Russian). Would this affect the restore at all?
I have no idea what to try next but I refuse to believe that y'all don't have some sort of solution for this!! What perplexes me is why the restore seemed to be running just fine the first time I tried it. I wish with all my might that I'd just waited and let it finish restoring before I left that day.
In the meantime, I'm just running the iPhone with the two-year-old backup. So annoying, but I hope it's only a temporary situation!! Thanks in advance for any help!
