How to retrieve lost contacts on iPhone or Android phone

Is your life incomplete without your smartphone? Do you spend most of your day texting, calling, or checking out different social media platforms on your phone? Then it is quite evident you are addicted to your phone and can’t imagine your life without it.

As we become more technology-dependent with each passing day, it becomes more difficult to survive without it. Just imagine what would you do if you lost contacts on iPhone one day?

Technology has seeped into our lives to such an extent that now we stay in touch with our family, friends, and colleagues through our smartphones. When you have saved all the details on your smartphone in the form of contacts and emails; why would you save it somewhere else, right? That is the mere reason why someday when you have lost contacts on iPhone or Android phone, you won’t even know where to begin.

You cannot solely depend upon technology as its digital platforms can betray you anytime. The contact list may get deleted accidentally or the smartphone hangs on its own. There is no need to panic as that will only induce the intensity of the problem. There are many ways to retrieve lost contacts on iPhone and Android phones so no need to freak out if the screen on your phone goes blank.

Let’s have a look at a few methods by which you can restore your lost contacts on iPhone and Android phones.

How to retrieve lost contacts on iPhone

iPhone gives its users an option to change the ways contacts are displayed on the screen. You need to check the setting of the contact lists on your iPhone. “All on My iPhone” is the option that needs to be selected, if that option is already selected it becomes easier for you to retrieve the lost contacts on your iPhone but if it isn’t then you might have to perform a more comprehensive method to recover the lost contacts.

Another way to recover the lost contacts is by using iCloud. Hopefully, you have synced your contact list on iCloud, as you can retrieve it from there instantly on your iPhone. All you need to do is open the settings of your iPhone and tap on the device name to open the “Apple ID, iTunes & App Store, iCloud” menu. From the list click on iCloud and tap on Contacts. Once done, you will be asked to replace your existing contact list with the iCloud list or to merge them.

Select the option of replacing the current contacts this way so you can restore the old contacts list if the contacts option had been turned on previously in iCloud.

Now, you need to select the ‘Delete from my iPhone’ button in order to allow iCloud to retrieve the contact list stored in iCloud.

You can also retrieve all the backups of your iPhone from iTunes or iCloud. In order to do restoration from iCloud; you need to:

The phone will have all the data restored till the time it was backed on iCloud. You can always select the backup time from where you want to retrieve the data.

File restoration from iTunes is also similar to iCloud. You need to connect your phone with the computer and then open iTunes. The only thing here to note is that restoration from iTunes will completely renew your phone data by overwriting everything.

Click on the iPhone tab in the menu of iTunes which is displayed on the upper left. From there, select ‘manually backup and restore’, now click the ‘restore backup’ icon. Pick up the closest backup date from where you want to restore the contacts and other data.

How to retrieve lost contacts on Android phones

There are various reasons for which you might lose contacts or data on android phones. Even they might disappear after a mere software update. You need to check out your recovery options available and also make sure that the data has been lost and not just hidden from the main menu.

It is very simple to retrieve lost contacts from Android phones. Go to the ‘settings’ menu and click on ‘contacts’. Select ‘all contacts’ under the icon ‘contacts to display’ and you will find your contact list immediately. If they don’t show up on your screen instantly, then you need to work out a more comprehensive method to retrieve the contact list.

You can retrieve your contacts from Gmail. The Google accounts are routinely backed up on respective Gmail accounts which includes the contact list also.

To retrieve the contacts from Google account you need to

Once you have completed all the above-mentioned steps in your Gmail account, get back to your Android phone. Open the accounts located in the settings menu and check on the box with the same Gmail account and tap on ‘sync now’ in order to retrieve your contact list back.

Another way of retrieving contact lists on Android phones is to restore them from an internal SD card or the phone’s sim card if you had backed up your contact list previously.

Go to the contact menu and select settings, here you need to select Import under the icon of Import/Export. Now click on ‘import from SD card’ for the backup in the SD card or ‘import from sim card’ to retrieve the contact list from the phone’s sim card.

In case none of the above-mentioned methods retrieve your contact list, then you need to download any Android recovery software to get hold of your contact list. It is very important to know the authenticity of such software as not all of them are reliable. They might carry viruses or malware which can damage your phone.

Endnote

The smartest thing after retrieving lost contacts on iPhone or Android phone is to set up a proper syncing schedule or a backup so that you don’t have to go through the same ordeal ever again.