What happens to the data for an app that gets removed during the update from iOS 5 to iOS 6?

Question

I have been using Mile Tracker app for logging business miles. Today when I updated my phone to iOS 6, that app disappeared. It also no longer appears in the phone app store or in the iTunes 10.7 store app section. i assume there is no iOS 6 version.

I have found instructions for reverting to iOS 5.

I am wondering where to find my Mile Tracker data?

If an app gets removed during an iOS update because it is not compatible, does the data get deleted from the phone as well? Is still on the phone? (In that case, how much other cruft is still taking up space). If it is still on the phone, will it get saved into a backup before I do the reset and restore to iOS5?

Answer 1

The upgrade to iOS 6 doesn't remove apps, so this is more of a case where things don't go as planned so it's going to be very hard to discern why this happened in your case (and similarly for others with the same symptom but not necessarily the same cause).

You should not lose data from an app - iOS update or not and the procedure is the same as if you lost data on an app anytime. Restore the phone from your backup to get back the data.

In this case, you may (sadly) find that the backup has corrupted data (or data that is otherwise not usable), but in most cases, this cures the loss of data and will allow you to start moving forward on iOS 6.

Answer 2

The app didn't get removed because it "wasn't iOS 6 compatible." New iOS versions can run older software fine, extra effort is required only for using new features/APIs unless there is a new app store requirement.

The app most likely got deleted because it didn't exist on the app store as of the time of upgrade to iOS 6