Iphone 3GS data erased after ios upgrade

[Fredo]

Hi,

A friend of mine recently gave me her old iphone 3GS to help her backup her photos. Note that the phone no longer has a sim card inserted.

I'm not familiar with iphones, always had android phones, so I charged the battery, plugged the iphone to my laptop. Couldn't access the files directly ( while I can on an android, but I know things are not as easy on apple devices... )

So I installed iTunes, tried to synchronise, but the operation ended too quickly so I suspected it didn't do anything, and as I couldn't get that photos, I tried the upgrade from iTunes, convinced that It couldn't be worse. And after the upgrade, nothing on the phone, no more photos, unable to activate it without a sim card...

I tried to use some iphone restoration tools but without success... any help would be appreciated. Are the photos really gone or can I hope to retrieve them with some disk analysis tool, if so do I have to jailbreak the device ? Can I do anything without a sim card in it ?

Thanks a lot for your help, I'm afraid she lost her photos...

 

[J. A.]

Welcome to iPhone Forums!

If this iPhone had an iCloud account, and the images were synced to iCloud, you might find them there.
Use a browser and login to www.icloud.com. Use your friend‘s iCloud ID and password. There, you should find „Photos“. Open it to see whether or not the images are there.

If the photos were not synced to iCloud, but the iPhone has been backed up to iCloud, you could find them in an iCloud backup.
If there‘s a recent backup to iTunes, the pictures could be included there. In that case, you‘ll need the computer that was used to backup the iPhone, and restore from that backup. Here are the instructions:
Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from a backup

If you can‘t find them that way, they‘re gone, and can‘t be retrieved.

Another note, in case you can find the photos:
iTunes doesn‘t help transferring images to a computer, btw. There are various options, which you can find here:
Transfer photos and videos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Hope that helps.

 

[scifan57]

First try inserting a SIM card and activate the iPhone, then you’ll be able to see what’s still on the phone

 

[Henfield]

Even a windows 10 powered PC can pull the images off an iPhone.

iTunes is not needed to do this.

 

[Fredo]

@J. A. : Thanks but I'm not sure she made an iTune backup of her iphone, and she certainly didn't have an iCloud account at that time.

@scifan57 : thanks, that's what I was planning to try next.

@Henfield : I suppose so, but nothing happened when I plugged the iphone to the laptop, no drive appeared, nothing on the iphone...