Frustrating iPhone 4S Problem

[KnicksDude]

I have a peculiar and incredibly frustrating problem that I am hoping this community can help me out in solving.

My wife dropped her iPhone 4S, which was not backed up. We went to the Apple store because we had insurance and paid $49 for a new 4S. So the tech took the old phone (which had a completely shot screen) and created a backup file on my MacBook pro.

He told us to go home, plug in the new 4S, and restore it from the backup. So we got home, and when we tried to restore the backup file to the new phone, it said we could not do so because there was not enough memory. Presumably, the new OS and software from the new phone took up more space than the comparable aspects of the old phone (she had nearly zero memory on the old phone because of so many pictures).

So we went BACK to the damn apple store (having to make appointments to see a tech, which is also enraging because the techs were who screwed this up). The tech told my wife that there was nothing that they could do to fix the problem, so I am stuck at an impasse.

I don't know a whole lot about Apple software but I'm fairly computer savvy in general. If someone(s) could provide some possible solutions and step-by-step instructions to get her contacts, photos, etc. from the old phone onto the new phone from the backup file that was created after the old phone went down, I would appreciate it.

I did some Google searches and could not find anyone with a similar problem. Thanks a million in advance.

 

[Intell]

Does/did you wife have any iTunes media synced to the phone and what size was the old one?

 

[KnicksDude]

No media syched through iTunes and she had (old) and has (new) the 16 GB 4S.

 

[rockitdog]

Did she use iCloud? If so, instead of creating a backup she could just re-install her apps and her pics and other saved to the cloud would just save to the new device.

 

[Mrbobb]

Remind me to never fill my phone to the brim.

 

[xArtx]

Kind of too late now, but you need space left in case you have to shoot a video..

Could you not borrow a larger capacity phone and do the process with that?
I suppose someone else would not want to have to set up their phone again,
but I think it "could" be fixed this way, and is just a lot of work.

 

[SHirsch999]

Kind of too late now, but you need space left in case you have to shoot a video..

Could you not borrow a larger capacity phone and do the process with that?
I suppose someone else would not want to have to set up their phone again,
but I think it "could" be fixed this way, and is just a lot of work.

This is my suggestion too. Find a larger capacity phone somewhere and delete some of the stuff on it, then do the restore. Or set it up as new and just add everything back. Might be time-consuming, but you will also get an idea of what is most important to have on the phone.