[solved] missing latest backups for iPhone after getting replacement phone

Question

Thought I would share this one in case anyone else runs into it.
My the speaker on my wife's iPhone 4 on Verizon had stopped working for phone calls for the second time and a restore didn't fix it, so she returned the phone and they gave her a new one at the store. We had made several backups over the last few days, the most recent was this morning.
So tonight we hooked up the new phone to iTunes and got ready to restore it, but iTunes said the restore was last updated in FEBRUARY. What?! My wife freaked out thinking all her photos etc. were now lost for good.
I held off on the restore and decided to do some checking around before doing anything. I found the folder where the restore files are, and sure enough I found files from today. I copied that folder just in case. I also checked in iTunes itself and the backups were listed. So what was up?!
It finally occured to me that we had recently upgraded her phone to iOS 5, but that the new iPhone 4 from the store was probably still on iOS 4 -- maybe iTunes was not smart enough to see this situation and tell us about it, and maybe it won't listed iOS 5 backups for an iOS 4 phone.
Well that turned out to be the case. But what to do to fix it? I figured if I could get iOS 5 onto the phone, we would be all set. But I didn't want to tell iTunes to label it as a new phone either -- I'm not sure if that would be permanent or what. So I took a leap of faith and held down the power button and home button simultaneously for a while, past the power off notification, until the phone prompted to be connected to iTunes to be restored.
Then I plugged it back into the computer (this is Windows 7, by the way). Sure enough iTunes said it detected a phone in recovery mode, and would I like to have iTunes restore it to factory settings and put on the latest iOS? I sure would, so I did that and waited...
After that was done, iTunes wanted me to active the phone with Verizon. We had already done that an hour earlier over the phone, but tried it anyway, and it failed. We ignored that failure and went into the phone in iTunes -- it now asked if it was a new phone or if we should restore it -- and the backup from this morning was listed. Phew!
Finally completed the restore. I noticed that all of the passwords for all apps were lost -- unlike with a normal restore/backup on the same phone -- but everything else (pcitures, apps, etc.) was there. Thank goodness!
So, if you have upgraded the iOS version and have to replace your phone and the nreplacement has an older iOS verison, then that may explain why your backups appear to be missing...

Answer 1

Yes, I tried. But nothing is working. I am feeling bad as such a costly phone stop working in 1.4 year ?
I am just sharing my experience.
I am not ranting but yes angry as I am eligible for upgrade in Nov 2012 so don't want to pay $149 for replacement as I can upgrade to iPhone 5.
Apple expert please help me how can I fix it. It's completely software issue.