Plugging in an iPhone didn't give me the option to back-up

[Howard Brazee]

My neighbor has an iPhone 6s that hasn't been ringing. Playing with it, I could occasionally see a drop window saying it was turning to quiet mode. All of the settings look right, but I found that there's a bug in a version of IOS that could be causing this. So I tied to update its IOS. There wasn't enough space. I deleted an app that should have cleared up the space, but there's just as little free space as before. It's full of "other" space.

Her phone hadn't been backed up in weeks, so I checked, there wasn't enough iCloud space. I took the phone and plugged it into my iMac and then my wife's iMac. After trusting, both of our Catalina finders thought it was a new phone and gave me the option to set up as a new device or restore from backup.

So why didn't it give us the opportunity to back-up?

I took it back to my neighbor, and after about 4 tries, was able to get her credit card accepted to upgrade to 50GB. Well, it was processing that transaction when I left her. Hopefully it will finish in the next couple of hours.

If it worked, I will backup and restore her phone then upgrade the IOS. And she will have a backup she can use whenever she gets a new phone.
Her primary goal is to get rid of quiet mode so she knows to answer the phone. Oh, I had to re-install her Apple Watch with all of this as well.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hi,

I hadn't heard of the Silent Mode bug in iOS. I also have an iPhone 6s, but haven't experienced that issue.

You may have only had the option to setup as a new device or restore, since her iPhone has never been connected to your Macs, or possibly any other computer if she is using iCloud Backup.

To process an update, the iPhone needs at least 3-4 GB of free space to accommodate the installer and room to apply the update. Recent versions of iOS will offload apps to make room for the update, then reinstall them once it is finished, without touching any of the app data.

Let us know how it goes with the increased iCloud storage, and if it is successful in updating.

C

 

[Howard Brazee]

It took all night to do the backup after she bought 50G iCloud. I was getting ready to reset it and restore, but she wants to replace the phone as its battery is very, very poor. So I'll take her to the store (Apple stores around her are still closed). Best Buy may be cheapest. Her daughter has her in the Verizon family plan. So I canceled the restore after waiting 10 minutes while it said it was taking 1 minute to update the backup.