iPhone 7 Restore to Previous State and Stay There!

[TinyRebel]

I purchased maps for the whole of the UK and software to show me my location. I have an iTunes back up taken when this was all working fine. I used the phone without internet access; but one day I made the mistake of having it on and the mapping software phoned home and broke. This happened because the software was sold out to another company who no longer support local copies of maps!

All I want to do is restore the backup and carry on working as before. I don't need the phone to work as a phone, neither do I need it to access the internet. When I have tried to restore the backup, the phone seems to restore okay, but on first boot up after the restore, it seems to do an update which changes the setup including deleting all the maps.

Can I restore the iPhone 7 and use it, without it contacting Apple and doing updates which break it? If so, please tell me how is this best achieved?

 

[Apple_Robert]

I don’t believe it is possible to do what you want to do, if Apple is no longer signing the iOS version you want to restore on your phone.

 

[eyoungren]

I don’t believe it is possible to do what you want to do, if Apple is no longer signing the iOS version you want to restore on your phone.

Correct.

OP, iPhone backups are not like you'd back up a computer. There are two partitions on iPhone storage. One is the system partition and the other is the data partition. Whether you back up to iCloud or to a Mac/PC, all you're backing up is the data partition.

The system partition is not user accessible. Apple has it locked down. Once it's updated to a newer version of iOS via a restore or update/upgrade you can't go back unless Apple is still digitally signing that version of iOS (as @Apple_Robert said).

Assuming that you were using iOS 10 which would have been the oldest version of iOS your iPhone 7 released with and is capable of running, you are still far beyond the time period where Apple stopped storing apps themselves in backups. Instead, Apple simply maintains a list of installed apps in the backup - and the newest versions are all downloaded upon a restore.

Basically…you can't go back.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Not only is the OS not backed up; neither are the apps. Apps reinstall directly from the App Store after restoring the phone.

So if an app update killed the feature, it’s completely dead.