lost contacts not on iCloud iPhone 4S

Where did you configure them to sync to?

If they are not on iCloud, a supported application on your computer, Gmail, or whatever other service you use, they are gone.

iCloud was on on the phone.  I backed up to aMac book pro.  No contacts except for a few can be found on the Mac and they are the few that were there and not From the phone..  I think what happened was that not all the contacts backed up to the cloud because there wasn't enough room, although it says that I have about 300+kb left in I cloud. It must have backed up the photos to cloud and ran out of room since only a few phone contacts are on the phone and nothing is on the Mac or cloud. That's the answer from Apple.  I have a gmail account on my phone, but can only find email addresses on my gmail page. Is there a cloud for gmail or google that could have them? Thanks for trying to help. I really appreciate it.

My only other thought is to try to figure out who the numbers belong to on my phone bill.  Or maybe Sprint has them?? Your response has helped me to think further.  Thanks again.

The carrier will not have your contact information... they do not maintain the information that way like traditional landline companies.

I was under the impression that contacts did not count towards iCloud storage limits, maybe I'm wrong, but I also do not use it for backing up my device, only syncing contacts.

As for finding contacts, if they are on iCloud, you can view them by going to iCloud.com and selecting contacts.

If they are in Gmail, they will be under contacts on your gmail account.  This will only apply if your gmail account was configured as Exchange and not using the default Gmail setup.

If the backup failed to restore the Contacts I would reccomend further exploring other accounts in which were established on the device. Contacts account for an incrementally small data usage in regards to storage for the account.