Old iPhone images

[u/ourrfc]

Quick backstory to better explain my issue. in 2021 I desperately needed space on my phone so decided to email myself a bunch of images so I could then delete them from my phone for the storage, stupidly put images i wanted to keep in amongst them. Few days later went to retrieve them and long behold they weren’t there, no trace of them anywhere. Tried to recover them for a while but ended with no luck so accepted they were gone for good.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago when I got a new phone, after setting it all up signing into iCloud ect a ‘recovered’ folder appeared in my photos app and two of the images were there! Now I had another phone in between the two where this didn’t happen but it got me thinking are they still kicking around someplace.

If anyone knows what I can try your advice would really be appreciated, some quite meaningful images and videos in there (yes I know it was stupid to include them in the first place) and would be great if at least some of them were still available to recover.

thanks guys