Careful: Restoring from iCloud is not the same as restoring from iTunes

[Tiger8]

This is from personal experience, just wanted to let you guys know that the best way to backup and restore your phone is still connecting it to your PC and restoring it through iTunes, here are a couple of differences I found between the two:

1. Not all your photostream photos come back: Say you have photos that are over a year old, you probably will see all of them in photostream. Restoring your device from your PC brings them all back, from iCloud only brings photos taken over the past 30 days (since iCloud only stores 30 days).

2. Apps: Not all your apps come back. iCloud does not store your apps, instead it stores points and after restore re-downloads your apps from the App store. If you have an App that was pulled from the App store, you will loose it, even if it's a paid app.

Needless to say restoring from iTunes is orders of magnitude faster than restoring from the iCloud.

I think the best way to go is to keep automatic iCloud backups (very convinient), but once a week or so plug your iPhone to your PC and manually create a backup.

Have fun

 

[r2shyyou]

This is from personal experience, just wanted to let you guys know that the best way to backup and restore your phone is still connecting it to your PC and restoring it through iTunes, here are a couple of differences I found between the two:

1. Not all your photostream photos come back: Say you have photos that are over a year old, you probably will see all of them in photostream. Restoring your device from your PC brings them all back, from iCloud only brings photos taken over the past 30 days (since iCloud only stores 30 days).

2. Apps: Not all your apps come back. iCloud does not store your apps, instead it stores points and after restore re-downloads your apps from the App store. If you have an App that was pulled from the App store, you will loose it, even if it's a paid app.

Needless to say restoring from iTunes is orders of magnitude faster than restoring from the iCloud.

I think the best way to go is to keep automatic iCloud backups (very convinient), but once a week or so plug your iPhone to your PC and manually create a backup.

Have fun

I agree that backing up to both iCloud and iTunes is the best way.

As for the differences, more info from Apple here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5262

 

[phr0ze]

2. Apps: Not all your apps come back. iCloud does not store your apps, instead it stores points and after restore re-downloads your apps from the App store. If you have an App that was pulled from the App store, you will loose it, even if it's a paid app.

Your computer, even without a backup, should have a 'sync'd' copy of your app IPA somewhere. Find it and you can put it back on the phone although its been pulled from the appstore.

 

[annamensa]

errrr, I know they are different, but I do not know how to get back my lost data through iCloud.

 

[shotts56]

Your computer, even without a backup, should have a 'sync'd' copy of your app IPA somewhere. Find it and you can put it back on the phone although its been pulled from the appstore.

Yes, but if its an app which has since been updated, you can't get the old version of the app back. This became an issue when I had an old 2nd gen iPod Touch which I was giving to my five year old son, rather than just chucking it in the bin.

The latest ios it could use was 4.2.1, so there were many apps on the device which I couldn't update, but I could still use the older version of that app on that device.

I wiped it and restored the device from the most recent back-up, but the problem was that the back-up didn't save the old version of these apps. It tried to install the newest version of these apps, which wasn't compatible with ios 4.2.1. and never will be. The result is that I've given my son an iPod touch with hardly any apps at all on it, and there won't be any new ones available for it. If I hadn't restored it, he would have had an iPod touch full of games (admittedly, older versions of them).

Lesson learned there.