Unsolvable 3.5 year iPhone Glitch - Engineers & Phone Geniuses Only!

Looking at this whole, there are a couple of things. I think root cause is a bad iCloud account - you need to start over and not jam every asset in at once. You have to slowly load stuff up.

1. A corrupted iCloud account is not unusual. I’ve had issues with photos - requiring a 2-3 day re-index - and the time felt like forever.

>> if this is the case, you really need to start over with a new account. You can re-apply an existing email address if it’s not primary and you remove/release it from your old account carefully

2. There was a significant change to iCloud (notably iCloud Drive) in 2015 (iOS 9 and 6s-generation phones). Many people lost files, and there are still assets in a weird netherworld which haven’t been removed.

3. All of the third party backup tools make things WORSE, not better. You’ve totally hosed the metadata and indexes (indices) on your photos (in an Apple sense).

I hear you on space and performance/slow speeds - this is why my wife and I have 256GB models but barely use 50-60GB of space.

Regarding photos - I would move maybe 1000 to a computer (Mac) and back to a new iCloud account to see if that starts syncing. Yes, I know location and other data is at risk of getting stripped (or not - it’s just metadata fields)

But offering to “PayPal $50” is sketchy.

We feel your pain. We see you are still struggling with this problem.

Sounds as though you can't use your old backup to reload files, etc., on to your new iPhone. Something keeps moving forward that is blocking your ability to access your iCloud account from your phone, and that something is most likely corrupted data in the backup itself. There's no way every new phone you've bought from Apple in the past 3 years could have the same issue, if it isn't something in your backup that you keep loading on to the new phones.

Have you already tried changing the password to your iCloud on all your devices?

I just had an issue last week that corrupted my ability to access my iCloud account from my iPhone, and then from any device too. Creating a new iCloud password fixed it. Then I had to redo a few other passwords for apps I bought through the App Store, and re-enter info for an outside of Apple realm email account.

If all your files are saved in iCloud, don't restore your phone(s) from a backup you have in iTunes on a computer, if possible. Let iCloud download the files its got stored, after you set up the phone as new. You might still need to create a new password for your old iCloud account first though.

Unfortunately, the only other thing I can suggest is go to a data recovery service place and see if they can save anything you don't have in your iCloud account, but you do have in iTunes on your computer.

P.S. Offering $50.00 to solve your issue, isn't what we, as the Support Community, really care about. Although, if you offered $500+, you might get some folks here more interested. But seriously, most of us aren't motivated by money offers. We just want to help others. We try our best, even if we totally miss the mark. We've all had our own problems with various tech devices and software, and many went looking for crowdsourcing to help too. So, I really appreciate the folks on here doing their best.

Wishing you good luck in getting it resolved.

I have no clue if this a solution, probably not but it's something to consider since I had a similar iCloud issue when getting new devices and accidentally did this and magically everything worked after a year or so of not being able to login to iCloud.

I might be forgetting a step but I'm pretty sure this is what I did.

1. Log into and sync all of your data with a Mac computer and check the setting to save a local version of all files being kept in iCloud. So if you have 100gb of data in iCloud it should save a copy of all 100gb to your Mac. I think the option is called Desktop and Documents in the iCloud settings menu. Even if it's a lot of data iCloud server's are fast and if you have a fast internet connection this shouldn't take more than a few hours...for me 100gb took about 20 min.

2. Enable viewing hidden files..easiest way to do this is opening your main iCloud folder in Finder pressing and holding Shift then adding Command then adding . (the period key) which will show you your hidden files which begin with a period so Finder knows not to show you these normally.

3. Find your iCloud Trash within..you should be able to just add "/.Trash" to the end of your iCloud folder's path in Finder to open it.

4. Empty your iCloud's Trash or restore any files you want to keep and double check it's all gone.

5. Allow your computer's version of iCloud to sync with the actual iCloud...maybe save a new large file on your computer and be sure the downloading/uploading circle indicator next to the file in your Finder completes the upload if you want to be sure.

That's what I did and magically my iCloud started working again on new devices.

Just a note..it's possible I also deleted all of the other files starting with . in my iCloud folder but I'm pretty sure it was the trash that did it. You may also want to try using the dot_clean utility in Terminal on your iCloud folder to get rid of all the resource forks associated with your files. In general, the directories that start with . are mostly useless and can be safely deleted without changing more than your viewing preferences for individual folders, but you should determine if you can delete these other directories for yourself.

Your use case is beyond the consumer aspects of an iPhone.

Get a professional solution for image, file, and text (SMS) management.

This isn't the platform for you, dude.

You're trying to jam a 10'-wide block in a 3" hole.

And I seriously believe Apple is in fact blocking you. Based on the content/commentary in this post, I have an excellent sense that's the case.