Hi westin,

No offence meant mate! I have no problem with supplying the information (if I had it), I just wouldn't post it on the front page of a public forum.

I am afraid I don't have an iPhone, although they are rather impressive. Over here they are very expensive and you are usually tied into a costly contract. The providers have now turned ratty with bandwidth allocation as well.

I would personally go with a tablet PC and a more regular cellphone on pay as you go. Much better value given the UK pricing scenario (anyways I have fat fingers and poor eyesight )

I will be seeing a friend on Monday or Tuesday who is a real cellphone geek. He currently has an iPhone 3, and may well have the answer. He is the guy who put me onto the Motorola management buyout and the new range of 4G "phones". Apparently they are doing a tablet PC as well. I will ask him and let you know.

I know you can reset the things (and lose your data) or even "hotwire" them to regain basic functionality. What I don't know is where it stores what it ought to consider to be temporary or volatile data? If it is on a removable memory card then you are in with a chance; provided that it only locks access, and does not encrypt the data. You could then use a card reader and PC software applications.

Otherwise I am sure that Apple have a way of getting into it, provided you can prove ownership and pay them the exorbitant fee. I would guess that it is something like D**l laptops and works on the device's serial number, so there is an unlock code that is unique to each device. A sort of "master password" if you like.

I would have thought that syncing would transfer all volatile data as well as static, although I could be wrong...................check the sync device?

Please let us know the answer as it could be important to other people with iPhones, who may think that they are backing stuff up and aren't

Personally, I wouldn't trust important data to that sort of device without backing it up ASAP. They are all too easily stolen, damaged, dropped or just plain malfunction?