The Iphone 10,000 Event

Very soon my Apple smartphone camera will reach the 9,999 image file number threshold. Cursory reading of forums suggests that there might be some unforeseen or undefined reset or write-over in Camera Roll or elsewhere in a virtual apple gallery.
It is iPhone 4S, old but very able, excellent battery life, sturdy, quick to focus, to respond to light conditions, I don’t want to change over to a newer iphone just because of the file numbering event.
I have been backing up all images on Google Photos. Maybe the reset with its possible write-over might not affect anything at all? Will there be a write-over, or maybe, a cessation of the photographing function, forcing the purchase of a new device? What do you recommend as a strategy? Thanks.

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I never had a 4S (I think I went from 3G to 6S to 11), and I’m not an Apple pro so I don’t know what exact issue you’re describing and take my advice with a grain of salt. But in my experience this is a non-event. I’ve generally maintained 10-15k pictures on my phones, and what I’ve seen is that different phone models have had various ways to reset the counting without overwriting. My recent ones make a separate folder for each thousand so it can reset the count within each bin. The old 3G used a weird random (?) alphanumeric numbering system on its folders so it also didn’t overwrite. For all phones, my issue has been freeing up enough memory (by deleting other apps) to allow it to take more photos, not overwriting because of numbering.

But, my overall strategy is to back up to an external hard drive every month or so, deleting photos from the phone once I finally get them databased. (I keep so many because I use my phone to take field pictures of habitats wherever I capture a fly for my research.)

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I wonder if you have something called Camera Roll, and if you see it in the Photos view when starting to choose a photo for uploading an observation?
BTW, I failed to mention that I see image file numbers only through the Google Photos. Apple Photos never shows me the file name or number.

You can see the image numbers for all photos by plugging your phone into a computer and opening it like it’s a thumb drive. Just open the storage folder on the device and you’ll see how your photos are organized and numbered, and you can even copy the photos to a directory on your computer. That’s how I’ve backed up my pictures over the years, not through Google or Apple photos.

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Same here. I ran out of file numbers (at least once) but Apple Photos didn’t seem to care. It simply started over from the beginning.

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Type Command-I

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I stopped copying photos from the phone onto my computer because file geolocation data was zeroed out or displaced with an absurdly huge accuracy radius. I find that Android might be even improving the accuracy of the geo data by some sort of estimation, which has been impressive, almost to the sub-5 meter radius accuracy.

Same with both my old SE and even older 4S.

I think the 4S was the last phone directly overseen by perfectionist Steve Jobs, with his stringent quality enforcement! If that’s right, I well believe you are getting excellent performance and durability from it.

FYI, the 10,000 event was a non-event, just as you all said. The file numbering cycled over to 00001 and beyond. No write-over because the next file number is way up in 9970s. Thanks.

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