Retrieving address book from previously registered phone

Question

I had my hardware replaced in my phone to increase the speed and had to register my phone as a brand new phone instead of syncing to my previously registered settings. My dilemma now is that for some reason I do not have my contacts in my addressbook anymore. IS there a way to retrieve the information from my previously registered settings? Hope this makes sense... going crazy without my contacts ;(

Answer 1

ebond wrote:
I had my hardware replaced in my phone to increase the speed
What? There's no official way to do that. Do you mean you replaced the whole phone?
had to register my phone as a brand new phone
You should have been given the option of restoring from your previous backup or setting the phone up as a new device. Restoring from backup is what you should have selected.
I do not have my contacts in my addressbook anymore
That's because you synced to an empty phone & the sync process is designed to make everything the same.
So, if your contacts are not on your phone & not in address book on your computer, they are most likely gone unless you regularly backup your computer or your last iphone backup contains them(doubtful at this point). When you sync, the first thing done is an iphone backup, which overwrites your existing backup. If you've already performed a sync, that means your existing backup would have been overwritten, removing contact data stored there.