Help! recover pictures from iphones 7 (not backed up)

[ian5745]

Hi all,
Hoping someone can help?
My iPhone 7 wasn't backed up to cloud or iTunes and randomly reset itself (powered off and then prompted me to go through set up).
It appears to have lost all my pictures and apple care said they couldn't do anything.
Thing is I'm sure I read somewhere that things aren't really deleted until they are written over so are the pictures still on the phone and can they be recovered?
Thanks

 

[scifan57]

Deleting items on an iOS device is not like on a computer. Unfortunately if those photos have been deleted from your iPhone and are not backed up anywhere else they are gone and can’t be recovered.
If you search on the internet you’ll see numerous services offering data recovery for iOS devices. If you read the fine print they’re really talking about recovering data from a previously made backup.

 

[ITGeek]

Theoretically the OP is probably correct: When they're normally deleted, they're probably not really "gone," per se. They just aren't referenced in iOS' data directory any more. Problem is: Unless there's a data recovery app (doubtful, for iOS, what with its stringent security measures), there'd be no way to recover them.

Probably doesn't matter, anyway. It sounds like these photos and other data weren't merely deleted. It sounds like the phone went through an "Erase All Content and Settings" procedure, in which case I suspect they really, really are gone.

I base my above assumptions on the belief Apple would not incur extra NVRAM write cycles to clear free'd space except when you're trying to clear the device before handing it off to somebody else.

To each his or her own, and we all have our reasons, but why in Fluffy's name would one choose not to have something that could easily be lost, destroyed or damaged backed up? I don't get that.