Who'd have thought the humble smartphone would become such an important part of our daily lives? Our social and work lives are more often than not organised on a small screen. They also keep us entertained with music and games. Then there are photos. Pulling out a photo album feels so old school when all my snaps live on my iPhone.
There's only one small downside to this miracle.
The hardware may be state of the art, the software well designed, but the meat-ware (that's us) is more often than not both stupid and forgetful.
This was fresh in my mind as I cursed myself for deleting a bunch of month old photos I needed for work. Having forgotten what they were for I deleted them. Trouble was that later on that week I did need them. Trouble was they were now sitting in that great digital recycle bin in the sky.
There are few sensations quite as bad as that awful sinking feeling when you realise that you've nuked a vital document.
Several hours of panicked research later, I stumbled upon the iPhone Data Recovery app.
The app runs on Windows/Mac OS and allows users recover deleted data from an iPhone/iPad/iPod touch. It'll also extract and export 12 types of files from previous iTunes backups.
Recovering my lost photos was as simple as downloading the application and installing it on a windows PC (Mac versions are also available). After connecting my phone to a spare USB port I ran a scan. Photos and videos as well as calendars, call history and text messages were soon located and identified.
A clean and thoughtfully designed interface meant I was also quickly able to track down the missing photos by choosing to only view deleted files in the scan results. Having found the missing photos I was then able to quickly restore them. Crisis averted. Phew!
All told, the iPhone Data Recovery app is well designed and its intuitive interface makes recovering deleted photos on IOS hardware a sufficiently idiot-proof process that even I managed first time round.
If there is one downside, it is this - Simplicity commands a steep price – the iPhone Data Recovery app costs a wallet searing $59.95. This said, if the deleted information is important enough no price is too high.