How to Fix a Unresponsive iPhone 6 Plus

Question

HAAALP! So my iPhone 6+ just randomly stopped working on me this past Saturday morning. I suspected water damage from steam in the bathroom (I occasionally use it to read ebooks while bathing), but just had a local repair shop open it up and there were no signs of water damage... They cleaned it with isopropyl alcohol and put it in the dehydrator anyways to see if it'd help. Nothing. They then tried replacing the battery and even put in a new charging port... still, nothing.

The phone is completely unresponsive. It's just over a year old. I've come to terms that I'm probably just going to have to get a new phone. However, I am concerned that I may have lost my most important data in the Notes section of my iPhone - specifically the section titled "on my phone."

I did not realize that this section meant that the notes were only stored locally on my phone and not on iCloud or gmail. I have extremely important to-do lists in addition to over 40 recipes that I created for an ebook that I am writing. I seriously just assumed everything would always be backed up on the cloud...

I am a pretty techy person and can't believe I overlooked this detail in storing my most important data. Is there anything I can do to recover this from an unresponsive phone? I made an appointment with the genius bar, but it's still over a week away. Will the notes automatically show up if I get a new iPhone or am I SOL? Please help if you know the answer!! Thank you!

Answer 1

Notes that are stored in iCloud means that they are accessible across all devices. There is good news though, notes that are On This Phone are saved in an iCloud Backup or an iTunes backup. There is a slight difference between an iCloud Backup and just having iCloud on for that service. Having iCloud on makes it sync all devices. iCloud or iTunes backup actually backs up data on the device. So if you have a relatively recent backup then you will get your notes back. So good news there.

Bad news, your phone sounds defective. It may be covered under warranty if you got Apple Care or it's one of the covered problems. But since you had it opened by a repair shop that may not be Apple certifies, that may have voided any warranty.

For future you may want to have it in both iCloud Notes and On This Phone notes. If you just move them it doesn't save to both, so I would copy and paste it to both sections. That way if something gets erased from iCloud it's still on your device. If your device gets lost you still have them in iCloud! It's a double backup since you have very important notes.

But it can't hurt to check with Apple. I just wouldn't mention someone opened it!

Comments

Thank you so much for your time and knowledge. My warranty has expired and I don't have Applecare, so I'm quite certain that my phone is toast. If I can pay to have it repaired, I may do so just so I don't lose my data and then I can resell the phone. I will absolutely save my notes in both folders from here on out... Also going to use other programs such as Evernote or Google Docs.

The only thing I am confused about is the iCloud backup that you mentioned... Unfortunately, I have never backed up my phone to a computer as I only have a Google Chromebook (no itunes). Could you possibly clarify that part a bit more for me? Do you think the notes will reappear on a new iphone if I purchase one? Or how can I access the icloud backup (if there is one)?

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You can only access the backup from a new device. When you activate a new device, it will ask you if you want to set it up as new or restore it from a backup. You would choose restore from backup. You can see what backups you have by going to Settings -> iCloud -> Storage -> Manage Storage -> Backups. And it will show backups. But you need an iPhone or iPad device to see this. I can't see what backup are available on the iCloud website unfortunately.

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OMG. You are a genius! Thank you!! I have a really good feeling about this :)