Foolishly, I installed the iOS 9 public beta 5 without doing a backup. My phone has no backup at all, in fact I do not even have iTunes on my laptop. My reasoning was that since this was the last beta, it should be very stable and I didn't have any worries. Now though, with this pop up update situation, I am reading that the public beta may expire may expire at any time and if it does, I have no previous version to revert to. If this happens before I get the GM update, what are my options? Will my phone be bricked? If there is a way to get it operational again, will I lose my texts and/or anything else? Any and all replies will be appreciated. Thank you.
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Will My iPhone Brick?
- Thread starter Elevatorguy
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It is always 100% foolish not to have backups (even copies of the backup) of all data and there is NO reasoning in the world that precludes this. FACT: at some point you will LOSE your data by not having backups.
Backing up won't make a difference in whether you can downgrade or not, because a backup doesn't preserve the OS, just the data that's on there. It's just a matter of whether you have some data from *before* you went to iOS 9 or nothing at all. You can't take a backup from iOS 9 to iOS 8 by the way. So you have to have outdated stuff pretty much if you go back.
Step 1: Make a backup of your phone NOW. Install iTunes if you have to, it's not a big deal.
Step 2: Continue enjoying your phone. If it bricks due to a beta expiration (unlikely, but you're worried about it so I'll explain) you can restore your phone to iOS 8.x. Just use it "as a new phone" for a few more days until the GM comes out.
Step 3: Update to the GM when it comes out. If you had to go back to 8.x, just restore from the backup you made in Step 2.
At worst, your phone will be on iOS 8.x for a few days without "your stuff" but at least you won't lose the stuff and can go back to your full install when iOS 9 comes out.
Thank you very much.Step 1: Make a backup of your phone NOW. Install iTunes if you have to, it's not a big deal.
Step 2: Continue enjoying your phone. If it bricks due to a beta expiration (unlikely, but you're worried about it so I'll explain) you can restore your phone to iOS 8.x. Just use it "as a new phone" for a few more days until the GM comes out.
Step 3: Update to the GM when it comes out. If you had to go back to 8.x, just restore from the backup you made in Step 2.
At worst, your phone will be on iOS 8.x for a few days without "your stuff" but at least you won't lose the stuff and can go back to your full install when iOS 9 comes out.
Look, stop using the word "bricked" because you clearly don't know what it means.
A phone can't be bricked if whatever state it is in can be reversed through software restore.
It takes just one "Activate iPhone" white screen to change a man into backing up his phone. I learned the hard way. I keep backups of my iPhone and iPad, plus keep copies of iOS in case iTunes tries anything stupid.
Hopefully there is enough overlap to allow us all to get the GM before the beta expiration.
I think beta 3 (public beta 1) expired just under 2 months after it came out. You should have enough time. I don't even think beta 4 (public beta 2) expired yet and it came out July 21st.