Restoring Your iPhone

There are those times when your iPhone feels a little sluggish or it just isn’t working right. Well, before you head on over to your local Apple Store, save yourself a trip and restore your iPhone first. I can almost guarantee you they are going to do this before they replace or repair the phone. So, instead of going there for them to just tell you to do this, do it first, then if your iPhone is still acting buggy, go in.

There are two types of restore when it comes to the iPhone. We will get into this in a bit. But first, in order to restore your iPhone, make sure you sync and backup your data first. Then, you will want to click on the “Restore” button. Now, before you do this, let it be known that a lot of your data will be removed from the phone. But that is why you have synced it first because all of your data is on iTunes.

Then your iPhone will go through the restore process. This could take a little while. When this is done, you will be prompted to let iTunes know what kind of restore you want to do. There are two options. Option 1 is to set it up as a new iPhone and option 2 is to restore from one of your backups.

There is a big difference between the two. First, if you choose “Set up as a new iPhone”, you will basically be setting up your phone as if it was brand new. This means that all of your previous settings that you had on your phone will be no longer. Your email won’t be there and your apps will be as if it were started for the first time. In this restore you are going to have to rearrange your apps the way the way when you had them before. This restore can be kind of a pain, especially if you have a lot of apps and special settings. But, at the same time, this restore, wipes your phone and you are really starting fresh.

With the “Restore from backup” you are restoring your iPhone to a previous backup. So you can choose the backup you just did and your iPhone will look like it just did about 10 mins ago. This is nice in that everything is still there for you and you don’t have to do much. On the flip side, if something was wrong with your iPhone in the software, the problem may still be there.

Apple will always tell you do set it up as a new iPhone just to make sure you clear everything off. That would be my advice too. Although it is a pain to put everything back to the way that you wanted it, it is worth it. That way you know you are starting with a fresh restart.