IOS – Frequent Locations didn’t record a location

I'm going to answer the first part of my own question.

After upgrading my iPod Touch to iOS 5, Location Services started working again. Not only did it start working, it's showing the location as a point in the street in front of the house.

1) The location I manually submitted to Skyhook in 2009 was in the street farther south, by the mailbox, so the old data point is not being used. Not suprised since I have no reason to believe that Apple went back to Skyhook. A visit to Skyhook's website verified that this point has not changed.

2) The location that Apple started using last year was a point on the main highway 1/2 mile east of here.

So somehow Apple has independently obtained new data about my wifi location. It's possible that during a recent party, somebody with an iPhone had connected to my Wifi and that data was sent back to Apple. It's also possible that a Wifi data collection vehicle drove down this road. It's very rural with only three homes on a one mile stretch, so although possible it's difficult to believe.

It was my previous understanding that Apple started requiring that devices be within range of several Wifi signals to improve Location Services accuracy. Being in a rural location, it's nearly impossible for my iPod to pick up any Wifi signal other than my own. With Skyhook, this was never an issue.

However, iOS 5 seems to heavily depend on Location Services so maybe they've changed something critical to how it functions in order to improve accuracy without requiring multiple Wifi signals.

I'm going to accept my own answer. If anyone has a better answer to my original question, I'll consider accepting that instead.

The sad and short answer is No.

1. Restoring to an old backup will erase any data accumulated on the phone in the meantime. There is no way to merge backups or such.
2. App-specific restores are possible for apps which offer some sort of cloud support. So if she is syncing her contacts with iCloud or Google they should still be here after the restore.

However, the long answer is maybe.

First, make a list of the programs where you do want to attempt to merge or replace her data. You will need to rename the current device so the backup is saved, then restore the device to get at the old data. At that point you can extract the "old" data to a computer. Then you would restore the "new" backup and merge the data back for each case where you could get it onto a computer.

You can see how this is tedious, prone to error, and requires you to learn the specifics of each app where you want to get your data. All great things to know, but you have to balance it against the time it would take you to simple re-create the data in the first place.

This also serves as the perfect use case for iCloud backup. In this case, you would never have not restored the backup since the cloud is so much more accessible than a computer and a USB cable.

• Angry Birds used to store the game settings in a file that you can use a utility like PhoneView to read onto the computer.

I would say - once you have a list of the apps you want to "pick" - come back and ask that single question - how can I access the saved game levels for game X and people here will step up if it's an easy google search or they know how to get that one file off the device.