This happened to two of my phones... iPhone X 2 months ago and now iPhone 11 pro...
For iPhone X I was unaware and had no idea it could happen, I knew the storage was full, I got a notification that it's full, I couldn't take pictures because of it so I deleted some and freed up some space, it let me take pictures but I didn’t because I didn’t want to fill up the storage. Then I couldn't open my apps so I restarted my phone and it got stuck on Apple logo. I went to Apple and all they told was to restore and delete everything. They told me even celebrities, politicians get this problem and lose all their data and live their life normally. I was like bruuuuh no. I'm a singer too, I had pictures and videos of me and other artists, I had videos of concerts, pictures from tours, trips and travels, moments of me and my relatives’ weddings, graduations, childbirth and etc…. There was a lot of stuff basically. Probably the most important thing for me which was in the phone is the information of my studies I’ve been storing it for about two and a half years (since I bought the iPhone X) for my exam which is next year. I can’t lose everything, I don’t have anybody who could give me the information.
After I made a scandal in the Apple store they told me that I can try and go to the 3rd party place, maybe they’ll help, because Apple doesn’t do stuff like data recovery. I remember even when my inner screen cracked and was glitching they told me they’ll delete everything I was like !&&* no. So now I went to that place and they tried everything, they tried updating but it showed Error 14. Of course.
Thankfully I had cracked my screen recently and I brought it to them and they had saved my whole backup in their computer. I put the iPhone X aside, I don’t want to restore it. I bought the iPhone 11 pro and they put everything in it. Then I did all data backup to iCloud ( because I didn’t do it with iPhone X ), it showed about 250 GB (literally everything what was in the phone. Pictures used about 220GB(I have 2 TB plan for iCloud) of backup in iCloud. That’s amazing, I thought my data and memories were safe. For a while.
After a month and a half of having the iPhone 11 pro I took a nap one day (few days ago) and woke up to my apps not opening again. And actually, it’s been happening previously after I bought it. I wouldn’t be able to delete any pictures and apps weren’t opening, I was afraid to restart because I thought it would get stuck again. So I’d just delete some apps to free up space and restart and it would be fine. This time it wasn’t fine. I couldn’t delete pictures, of course. My storage was stuck on 255.5 GB even though it was about 230 GB before. I deleted an app which was using almost 15 GB of my space and it was still stuck on 255.5 GB! Now I surely knew if I restart it it will get stuck on apple logo. After a while it showed that I won’t be able to call, text and use mobile data before I update my phone. I couldn’t do a quick new backup because I’d need to verify my Apple ID first with an SMS. But I knew there was an old backup, so…THEN, after another while it suddenly went from 100% to 1% (battery health is 99%) and almost turned off. I put it to charge at least a little bit. The next day I brought it to the same place they used to fix my phone all the time and told what happened. They tried to back up my files to the computer but computer didn’t show them. We checked iCloud and it showed a backup of 250 GB (not the files, just we checked backup amount). It was Friday and the place was closing already so I decided to come on Monday. The worker called me on Monday and told me that he came and found the phone on Apple logo (it was on charger all the time). I thought %#*@, okay, well, I don’t have a choice, I don’t have money to buy a new phone, just restore it. I still had the iCloud backup, yeah? So it restored and I could choose the backup. It showed the backup from last Friday (the day I brought it to fix). We thought maybe it was doing the backup but it didn’t show it maybe? Alright I decided to wait till the backup recovers. It finished updating but not all pictures and notes are there. Before that, I logged into iCloud on computer. I only saw a half of the pictures (obviously not the ones I needed) but the backup amount still showed 250 GB ( all of it ). It now finished updating finally and it’s still not here. Now iCloud backups show only a backup of 1 GB I did in 2018…. Where did the 250 GB backup go? And why it didn’t appear fully when I was doing the file restore from iCloud backup? Phone was always on WiFi and charger.
I’m still keeping the iPhone X hoping Apple will do something and help us all to find the solution for this issue and we all can get our data back. My friend told me I could try sending it abroad but as I can see Apple users worldwide are suffering from this ( I am from Lithuania ). This problem is growing day by day, I have hope Apple will think about it and help.
Also, I wonder, does this happen only for iPhone X and further or also to the older models? I saw a comment saying iPhone 6s never had this issue. Anyways. Cheer up everybody.