iPhone 6 Plus frozen on start screen

My daughter's iPhone 6 plus became frozen on the start screen. I'm sure it's because her phone is too full of data (photos) and has almost no free space.

We've tried to "update" the phone from iTunes, but after 15 minutes it kicks you out and we've done that twice now. Apparently the only other option is to restore it to factory settings, which of course erases all the data, and she's totally opposed to that. Is there any other option?

Well, use iTunes to do a full backup to that Mac (select On This Mac and Encrypted (Don't forget the password you put in, you will need it later)). That will backup EVERYTHING on the Phone, including her pictures, then do a Factory restore (which will erase everything) and update. Then restore the backup. (And have her do some culling on the pictures, sooner or later that lack of free space will cause major problems.)

That's something we should have done before, but now there's no way to get the phone into normal functioning mode in order to do that. All I can get is this screen to either "update" (which always times out) or Restore (which she vehemently doesn't want to do, although I suspect she may not have a choice).

Has the phone not been backing up to iCloud either? If not, then you're right, you're likely out of luck and will lose stuff.

Does it respond to a hard reset? If that does not help and you are close to an Apple store, a trip to the genius bar might help. If it won't respond to anything that is probably your only option.

Lisa