iPhone 3GS woes, another Crapple bites the dust.

[MrMazda92]

Today I was wandering around aimlessly at Old Navy, minding my own business while my Girlfriend maxed out her credit cards on clothing, sending a few texts here and there.

Out of nowhere, my text messaging on my phone would crash, similar to the crash you experience with many of the 3rd party apps. I haven't seen this before on any Apple Designed Apps, so it surprised me! I went to resend the text, and my phone restarted.

Lo and Behold, upon restart, I was unable to complete the startup! The phone brought me to the recovery mode loop, which(from my reading online, I haven't had it happen before) typically happens when you try to jailbreak or update your iPhone. The majority of the information I gathered online said it happens when you unplug your phone mid-update, or mess up your jailbreak process.

The best part, I haven't found another example of a user simply having the issue pop up in the middle of nowhere. I certainly wasn't jailbreaking my iPhone in an Old Navy store.

I went through the typical diagnostic hassle that people go through with personal electronics, googling everything I could think of and watching youtube videos by 12 year old kids, who copied guides off of other websites while wearing a funny colored hat.

Anyways, none of the 10 or so methods I tried were helpful at all.

Any ideas?

I DO have apple care for the phone, but the main issue is that I NEED to recover the information stored on the phone. If it were as simple as restoring it to factory settings, I'd have done it by now. I have legal documentation as well as contact information on the phone that I am otherwise unable to recover.

Thanks guys.

[hgallegos915]

You dont synck it with itunes? No way to back the whole thing up?


I suggest an android device so you can back an image of your phone . :O

[MrMazda92]

I do back certain things up, but other things can't be backed up with iTunes.

I'll look into software for storing a full image, although I don't know enough about it to make my own. The texts and voicemails are the hard part, and they're the only things I truly needed. The rest was inconvenient, but not damaging.

I bit the bullet and just restored it to factory image, because I don't have another phone to use. Lesson learned, I'll take photos of anything important.