Help Galaxy S4 data inaccessible

[Android Security]

Hello all. My friend has a Galaxy S4 that was damaged during a bout of wrestling. The screen is now broken (not only the glass - nothing appears on the display) but the phone does still boot up. If plugged into a computer then the phone appears but displays no files because, presumably, the phone is locked (with a code).

So my question is...is there a clever way of unlocking the phone when it is attached to the computer? Perhaps there is software that could do it? My friend could then copy off his precious photos.

Many thanks,

Brian

 

[Hadron]

You've called yourself "android security", so will probably appreciate why the OS isn't designed to make this easy: if it were anyone could copy the data from anyone else's phone without unlocking it!

If he had USB debugging enabled you could use ADB to do this. But if it isn't enabled already you can't enable it without unlocking the phone and using the screen.

Stuff that's on the SD card is easy: just stick the card in a card reader. That's one reason I'd always recommend keeping photos on a removable card (if the phone has one) rather than internal storage, because you can recover them in situations like this.

 

[Brian_nfc]

You've called yourself "android security", so will probably appreciate why the OS isn't designed to make this easy: if it were anyone could copy the data from anyone else's phone without unlocking it!

If he had USB debugging enabled you could use ADB to do this. But if it isn't enabled already you can't enable it without unlocking the phone and using the screen.

Stuff that's on the SD card is easy: just stick the card in a card reader. That's one reason I'd always recommend keeping photos on a removable card (if the phone has one) rather than internal storage, because you can recover them in situations like this.

I actually thought that I was naming the question, not myself...Unfortunately he doesn't have USB debugging enabled and the photos are on the internal NAND drive. Thank you for your reply though.