So iOS 4 came out the other day… Yes, I recently switched from a Motorola Q9c with Windows Mobile 6.1 with Verizon to an Apple iPhone 3GS 16GB from AT&T.
Anyway, after updating iTunes to version 9.2 I was notified that the iOS 4 update was available. I sync’d my phone and performed a backup to make sure that all of my data was safe and then clicked the update button…
At first, things looked good. The phone rebooted into recovery/update mode (causing it to disconnect, then reconnect with my computer). At this point the little balloon appeared in the notification area alerting me to the fact that a new device had been connected. When I checked, it said it was an “Apple USB Device (Recovery Mode)” and that it was searching Windows Update for a drive. This took far too long and the iOS update timed-out, leaving the iPhone in Recovery/Update mode. Ugh.
After reconnecting the device, the only option iTunes presented me with is to restore the device to it’s original settings (ironically using iOS 4, not the original iOS 3.1.x) and that I would need to restore from a backup to get my applications, settings, photos, etc, back. I had nothing to lose at this point, so I started it. Again I was prompted with the new device notification, but this time I chose to cancel locating the driver on Windows Update. Once I did this, the Restore process started chugging along. Once it completed and I restored my prior backup, I seemingly had everything back to normal running iOS 4, including my apps. But when I looked at the photos and videos, they were all gone!!
After getting mad for a few minutes, I decided to try restoring from an earlier backup. Once that process finished, viola! My pictures were back.
After getting through all of this and playing with it for a little bit, my wife asked if I could update her iPhone as well (she has been dying for the background audio support for Pandora). This time I had learned my lesson and followed the steps below and the upgrade went without a hitch:
- Connected the iPhone and copied all of the pictures and videos to a safe location.
- opened iTunes and did a ‘Transfer Purchases’ to ensure all of my Wife’s purchased content (apps & music) had been copied to my computer, followed by a ‘Sync’, and finally a backup.
- Clicked the Update button. The device went into Recovery/Update mode and when the Windows device balloon appeared, I opened it up and cancelled the driver search on Windows Update. I had to do this twice.
- The phone’s screen switched from showing the ‘USB connector and iTunes logo’ to just the Apple logo with a progress bar and the phone updated within 5 minutes!
Success! Hope this helps!
