iPhone: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Backing Up the iPhone

You've spent all this time tweaking preferences, massaging settings, and getting everything just so on your brand-new iPhone. Wouldn't it be great if you could, say, back up all that work so if something bad happens to the phone, you didn't have to start from scratch?

With iTunes, you can. The backup grabs everything that isn't explicitly named on the other tabs in iTunes (music, videos, applications, and so on)—less visible things, like your iPhone's mail and network settings, your call history, contact favorites, notes, text messages, and other personal preferences that are hard or impossible to recreate.

You get a backup every time the iPhone syncs with iTunes, whether you're using the automatic or manual sync options. The backup also happens before you install a new iPhone firmware version from Apple. iTunes also offers to do a backup before you use the Restore option described on Reset: Six Degrees of Desperation.)

Using That Backup

So the day has come when you really need to use that backup of your iPhone. Maybe it's become unstable, and it's crashing all over. Or maybe you just lost the dang thing, and you wish your replacement iPhone could have all of your old info and settings on it. Here's how to save the day (and your data):

1. Connect the iPhone to the computer you normally use to sync with.

2. When the iPhone pops up in the iTunes source list, click the Summary ...