Does restore include EVERYTHING

[mark34]

In PDA's I have used in the past I have always used a third party application to do complete back-ups of my device since OEM back-ups really didn't backup everything.

I have many applications on my iPhone, many with specific settings and in some cases data. If my iPhone hard resets, or I lose it, will the restore in iTunes bring me back to exactly where I was at the time of the last back-up?

(I realize it probably doesn't back up movies, music, appointments, and contacts since those can be synched or pushed)

I did a search so I apologize if this has been covered.

 

[scaredpoet]

I have many applications on my iPhone, many with specific settings and in some cases data. If my iPhone hard resets, or I lose it, will the restore in iTunes bring me back to exactly where I was at the time of the last back-up?

Yes, it backs up everything. I've restored a few times, and also restored from 1st Gen to 3G iPhone.

So yes, it is possible to back up your phone, do a hard reset, and then restore from the backup and have everything function again as before. Note that the restore DOES take a while if you have a lot of content (8GB takes about 45 minutes to fully restore). So make sure you have some time set aside to do this.

 

[Phil A.]

Excluding iPod content, restore brings everything back except (for some strange reason) your time zone which gets set back to Cupertino and (I may be wrong here but I think this is the case) cookies in Safari. It even brings back paired bluetooth devices, which is pretty impressive

 

[twynne]

I started a similar thread yesterday. The one thing learned was that music does NOT appear to get restored if you have your music set to be manually managed. The workaround as suggested by another forum member was to create one or more playlists and set those to sync automatically.

I also experienced the 'time zone' bug mentioned above, but everything else appears to have returned to exactly as it was before the update.

One other thing (minor) that I lost was a text message that came in while the iPod was connected for the restore. I'm guessing it arrived after the backup had been taken, but while iTunes was processing the firmware file prior to restoring. My suggestion would be to switch into airplane mode before connecting to ensure you don't lose anything or impact the restoration.

 

[eye.surgeon]

What time zone bug? It works fine for those of us on the west coast .