Help! My iPhone is Stuck After Update and I Can’t Recover My Photos

I don't think the Apple Store gave you the full story. Error 100 can happen for a variety of reasons, not just storage. They claim the update requires a minimum space, but that's not always the issue. As far as 'revive mode' goes, that doesn’t exist in the way they described. My advice? If it really does come down to a full restore, at least start doing regular backups in both ways (local and iCloud) moving forward.

I feel for you; that’s a terrible situation. Many people have experienced issues with local backups failing, and it sounds like you tried everything you could. Unfortunately, once it’s in that recovery loop, it can only be restored to factory settings, which means losing your data. I'd recommend contacting a data recovery service if your photos are that important. They might be able to retrieve some of your files before you restore it.

It’s really unfortunate what happened. Honestly, the best way to avoid situations like this in the future is to utilize iCloud Backup. It’s a free service and really reliable, but I understand you've been reliant on local backups and expected that to work. Sadly, it looks like there’s no way to recover those recent photos now without a backup. It might be a good idea to think about getting iCloud set up after you get out of this mess.