iPhone help?

[ihearttc]

Both me and DS1 (nearly 16) got new iPhones for Christmas. Mine has set up perfectly ok but somehow DS1’s has lost all the photos he had on there despite us both setting them up the same. Normally I would say just suck it up but they are videos of his GCSE PE practicals which he needs to submit. He has tried resetting the new phone and transferring it all over again but still nothing. We are in Tier 4 so Apple is shut.

Any suggestions? It was all backed up to the iCloud so they should be somewhere but no idea where.

Are they still on the old phone? Can he not submit them from there? Or save them to Dropbox instead of transferring them over?

Try logging in to the iCloud from a browser (chrome, internet explorer etc) to see whether

• they are already in 'the cloud' and have just not downloaded to the phone or
• they are stored only on the old iPhone

if they are stored only on the old phone, they need to be saved to iCloud

https://www.icloud.com

They are on the old phone but have somehow been saved to a really low resolution so he can’t view them? They weren’t low resolution until he got the new phone.

They are on the cloud on his Mac but it’s just like a blur, you cannot actually view them or play them. It’s like the resolution of them has changed somehow but they aren’t on the new phone at all. They have to be submitted by an app as well so they need to be on his phone.

He is normally really good with stuff like this (as most teenagers are) but is completely stumped as to why you can’t view them.

Not sure it will help or not ...
When I got my new Apple Iphone the shop set it up for me ( I'm useless at that sort of thing ) I was a bit cross as many of the photos seemed to be missing , some were there but many were not , it took about a week to 10 days for them all to move across to the new phone

Thank you! That might actually be the case but it just seems very odd that mine have all gone across ok and he can’t see any of his.

From googling I wonder if he has somehow clicked optimize phone storage which apparently reduces the quality of the photos? But I can’t see how to reverse it?

Settings > ICloud > Optimise IPhone storage

Oops, should be iCloud > photos > optimise iPhone storage OP

Fab thank you, will give that a try!

You can turn off the setting to not optimise them in the future, but I’m not sure he’ll be able to reverse it for those specific photos - if the quality has been reduced to save space, the originals may not exist anymore.

Does his old phone say that it’s fully backed up? Can he screenshot what he means by “not viewable”, scribbling out anything identifiable?

It can sometimes take a while for all the photos to migrate, but it’d be unusual for it only to affect these photos. Does he have newer photos on his old phone, and can he open them? What format are they in? Hopefully there will be an easy enough solution!

Contact Apple online and they will help you

The newer photos are absolutely fine, it’s anything older than the last 2 weeks that seems to be a problem.

Will try to get him to take a screenshot, he’s currently having a bit of a meltdown about it which I suspect is more about the lack of clarity over exams etc than missing videos!

It’s like they are there but you can’t view them clearly, like a video taken on a phone 10 years ago if that makes sense?

Apple can talk you through issues like this- they are very helpful

That’s the next port of call if we can’t work it out this way.