I lost my iPhone 4, can I still get my photos back?

So a couple of weeks ago I lost my iPhone 4. I know for sure that I turned on the automatic backup in the settings so I know that maybe some of my files in my phone are still in my iCloud but the problem is I saw in some forum somewhere that iCloud only saves your photos for 30 days which means I may have lost most of my photos.
My questions are:
1. Does iCloud save All your photos and then deletes it of your phone or does it only save the 1000 recent photos that you have in your photo stream? Because I have an iCloud app in my windows laptop but when I open the photos it only shows 200+ photos, not all of them and in my photostream in my old phone it only shows the recent 1000 photos so I may have lost all the old photos in my camera roll/
2. When I buy a new iPhone which is a few months time, Can I still my photos and other files or will they get deleted in like a few months.

Yes if it's backed up with iCloud

Try iCloud

Yes if you backed them up, otherwise no because they don't fall out of the sky. You can sign on to http://www.icloud.com/...icloud.com on a computer and see what you have backed up.