iPhone and photos

fwor

I've been asked to help a visually impaired person to back up their iPhone 3G.

Problem is I've never used an iPhone before and know nothing about them!

The main aim is to backup her photos/videos, which she only has on the phone and nowhere else. There around 400 of them - 250 in an album called Camera Roll, and the rest in one called Photo Stream. There seems to be no pattern to which photos/videos get stored in which of these two albums - the user is never asked to choose, and it seems just to be random.

Now when I connect the iPhone to her laptop, it appears in Win 7 as a storage device much like any other camera ~but~ I can only see the 250 photos in Camera Roll, not those in Photo Stream.

Can anyone please explain why I can't see (and back up) the ones in Photo Stream?

Handsome90

iPhone works a bit differently than other phones and I'll try my best to solve your problem.

The photos inside the album "camera roll" were taken by the iPhone's camera. So if you take a photo using the phone now, it will be stored in that album.

Photo stream allows you to share photos between Apple devices or between other Apple users. Photos in the photostream album may not be stored permanently or at full resolution. It's useful, if for instance, I take a photo from my iPhone but want to show it to my friends using my iPad. So the photo from the iPhone will be uploaded to the cloud and will be downloaded to the photostream album in both my iPhone and my iPad. Therefore, I don't have to look for the USB cables and need a computer to transfer the photos between them.

Moreover, if you have 1 Apple device and haven't deleted any photos from the camera roll, then the number of photos present in the camera roll and photostream should be the same. However, the photos in the photostream album may be at a lower resolution.

This webpage explains the functions of photo stream

I think I found a solution for your problem. Go to photos>photo stream and select the photos that aren't present in the camera roll album and save it in the camera roll. You can do this by touching edit (top right hand corner), selecting the photos that are missing from camera roll and click save>save to existing album.

Since the missing photos are in the camera roll now, you should be able to backup them by connecting the phone to a computer using a USB cable.

Hope this helped

fwor

Excellent - thanks very much for that, I will do as you suggest.

Handsome90 wrote: »

Since the missing photos are in the camera roll now, you should be able to backup them by connecting the phone to a computer using a USB cable.

Unfortunately, that's where I hit the second problem. If I connect the iPhone to the laptop via USB, I can "Select All" the photos in Camera Roll and then Copy and Paste the photos into a folder on the laptop, and it shows a correct Copying message box with an estimated 40mins to copy them all ~but~ it stops copying after about a minute, so all I get on the laptop are the first 16 photos or so. I get no error message - it just stops.

Is this another iPhone quirk? Is there a way around it?

We initially thought it was the Auto Screen Lock, but we turned that off and it still did the same, at the same point give or take a few photos.

Handsome90

I've a mac and I can't see my phone as a USB drive when connected to my computer. Maybe, it's different in Windows but I'm afraid I can't help you with that until I get my hands on a Windows computer.

From the info that you have given, I'm trying to figure out whether the cable or the port of the phone is faulty or not. When you connect the phone to the computer, it should charge the phone at that time. Leave it connected to the computer for like 5 minutes and check whether the phone is being charged for the whole 5 minutes. If it's being charged for the whole 5 minutes then the phone's port and the cable is fine and the problem lies elsewhere.

If anyone else cannot help you with this, I think you'll get a better response by posting in the Apple forum here

flashg67

My kids use itunes and/or icloud to back theirs up - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1766

matttye

If you download the iCloud control panel on the laptop, if it's not already installed, you can set it up so that all photos taken on the phone are automatically copied to the laptop using the cloud. Every photo in photo stream will also be on the laptop if you enable this feature.

On the laptop, if you can see start menu > all programs > iCloud > iCloud then the iCloud control panel is already installed. You need to open that application and login to the same Apple ID that is logged into on the iPhone. The phone should handle the rest.

The default folder for pictures to go to is My Pictures\Photo Stream\ I think.

If the iCloud control panel isn't installed, look for start menu > all programs > Apple Software Update and that app should offer to install the iCloud control panel for you.

securityguy

matttye wrote: »

If you download the iCloud control panel on the laptop, if it's not already installed, you can set it up so that all photos taken on the phone are automatically copied to the laptop using the cloud.
.

Not on a 3G: they don't support anything post iOS 4.0.3 and iCloud is only in iOS 5. Which is why I'm a bit sceptical about the full facts being in the OP's write-up, because you wouldn't normally expect PhotoStream (which is another iCloud feature) on a 3G. Is it actually a 3GS?

matttye

securityguy wrote: »

Not on a 3G: they don't support anything post iOS 4.0.3 and iCloud is only in iOS 5. Which is why I'm a bit sceptical about the full facts being in the OP's write-up, because you wouldn't normally expect PhotoStream (which is another iCloud feature) on a 3G. Is it actually a 3GS?

Must be. No matter which phone it is though, if photo stream is on it, what I posted should work. I agree it can't be a 3G though.

fwor

securityguy wrote: »

Not on a 3G: they don't support anything post iOS 4.0.3 and iCloud is only in iOS 5. Which is why I'm a bit sceptical about the full facts being in the OP's write-up, because you wouldn't normally expect PhotoStream (which is another iCloud feature) on a 3G. Is it actually a 3GS?

Ah yes, it must be a 3GS (she actually told me it was a G3 which is why I was confused). I downloaded Itunes and installed that on her laptop, and when I connected the phone it said that IOS 6.0.3 (?) was available to install, so it must be a 3GS.

I very nearly just went ahead and used iTunes to sync the laptop and the phone, by creating an empty folder in My Pictures and pointing iTunes at that as the place to sync to (she has about 2000 pictures already in My Pictures, and didn't want all those on her phone!). But my confidence failed me. The thought of ending up with an empty folder, an empty phone and all of the photos of her kids growing up gone, and I couldn't take the risk. Hence the attempt via USB as a backup to the backup.

I'm fairly sure the cable is not faulty, as the phone continued to charge throughout.

Thanks for the links and tips - I was staying away from iCloud on the basis that the fewer things you change at any one time, the better the chance of success, but I think perhaps I need to use it here.