Dr. Fone review

Macworld

At a glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Cons

Our Verdict

A fantastic “one-stop-shop” for iPhone (and Android) device management, Dr. Fone is less a data recovery tool and more a Swiss army knife of potential – if you’re willing to pay for each feature.

Price When Reviewed

Data Recovery from $59.95 per year (usually $68.95); Full Toolkit $99.95 a year (usually $139.95); Perpetual license $115.95 (usually $162.95).

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If need to recover some lost data from your iPhone there are a number of apps in our of the best data recovery apps for iPhone, with Dr Fone being one, though, calling Dr Fone a “data recovery app” is a little of a misnomer.

That’s because Dr. Fone is absolutely packed to the gills with features. Some are very useful, some are fairly useful, and some won’t be very useful at all, but the exact categories each of those find themselves in is largely down to user intent.

Thankfully, you can just buy the things you want or need from Dr. Fone’s repertoire of tools, meaning that while it may set you back $100 for the whole kit and kaboodle, it’s well worth a look for each of its individual pieces, too.

First Impressions

Foundry

I’ll admit that Dr. Fone didn’t put its best foot forward when I was testing. For one, it took a couple of tries to get the Mac app to connect to my iPhone (hooked up to my Mac via USB-C), while it also displayed what appeared to be a broken pop-up window that I simply could not close.

I did start to wonder if installing it may have been a mistake, but I persevered – and I’m glad I did.

With a whole host of tools and a rundown of your connected devices on the left-hand side of the screen, it’s easy to get around the Dr. Fone interface. It’s pretty boilerplate in terms of modern apps, but I was impressed by the replication of app icons on the sidebar to make it easy to know where I needed to look.

Dr Fone features

Foundry

As I’ve already mentioned, there’s a whole host of features here. The “Toolbox” menu is essentially your starting point, and features the option to remove Apple ID and locks, spoof your GPS location for games like Pokemon Go, and transfer Whatsapp data to other devices.

There’s also a way to copy data to a new phone, erase that data, or recover passwords from a phone. It’s worth remembering that whatever you do, you’ll need to plug your phone in, unlock it, and deem your computer trustworthy before you can do anything.

Foundry

Still, we’re here for data recovery, and I was impressed at how deep into my deleted files and data the app could get to. I saw WhatsApp images from chats going back years, messages I could recover, and much, much more.

It’s impressive stuff, even with some performance concerns I’ll cover shortly. There are some offers right now, so the whole package will set you back $99.95/£78.86 a year (usually $139.95/£110.42) or $115.95/£91.48 on the perpetual plan (usually $162.95/£128.57). Note that tax is added at the point of sale as is a “download insurance service” which includes 24 months warranty ($4.95/£3.91), the latter can be removed. Without the insurance the perpetual license is $139.14/£109.78 currently.

However, you can save money by just buying the data recovery access for $59.95/£47.30 per year (usually $68.95/£54.40), or $69.95/£55.19 (usually $63.08) as a one-off fee, and this works for up to five devices. Again, tax is added at point of sale as is the insurance, so the U.K. price is actually £66.23 for the perpetual license, £56.76 for the yearly license.

Dr Fone annoyances

Foundry

I believe Dr. Fone to be a great piece of software, but one that feels a little like it’s creaking under the weight of its ambition at times.

Once you install it, it’ll open up smaller apps to deal with your individual queries. The Data Recovery tool, for example, pops out into its own app, but these apps can be a little temperamental.

On more than one occasion the data recovery tool flat-out crashed on my M1 Pro MacBook Pro during the initial scan, so I’d definitely recommend letting it do its thing. For me, the initial scan took around 80 minutes, but I was impressed with what it managed to dredge up.

The Bottom Line

Viewed purely as a data recovery device, Dr. Fone is an impressive piece of software with an array of extras you may not need.

Viewed as an all-in-one toolbox, it’s impressive and expensive. Your mileage will vary, but for grabbing that lost file or deleted photo, you can buy each feature piecemeal.