Help Old Nexus 3 crashing problems

[RigdenYT]

Hey, so ive since upgraded to a nexus 5 and have no intentions of going back however i need to get things, specifically pictures off my old phone but i cant do that for reasons ill explain here.
so essentially im pretty sure its probably water damage in my old phone because it was left in a steamy bathroom during a shower or whatever and while i didnt think that would do much i guess it did.
so the problem i have is the phone works perfectly fine for charging, you can charge it up and it will never crash on the charging icon when a phone is off but charging no matter how long you leave it on but when you try to actually access the phone via turning it on it gives you only enough time to unlock the screen before the screen quickly flashes purple, makes a violent flickering sound and turns off..now im pretty sure this isnt a battery issue since when i turn the phone on and take out the battery while its still on the charger the same thing happens (although you can correct me if im wrong). another problem it might be is some kind of motherboard damage but honestly i have no idea what it is, if you need more details ill gladly provide them. basically i guess my question is, is there a way to fix this?, if no is there a way to get what i want off (specifically photos not on a sd card), if no again then what would be the problem and how much would it be to fix it?? Thanks!

also thanks for baring through my wall of text
TL;DR: Y ME PHONE NO WERK?!?!?!?, HOW DUZ FIX

 

[Hadron]

I've never heard of a Nexus 3 before. Is this the galaxy nexus? Just curious.
It sounds tricky to be honest. Unless you already have Usb debugging turned on you need to unlock the device to access the data. Or does this happen when you turn on regardless of whether you unlock the screen? If so I don't think then is anything you can do. A phone cannot crash when turned off as there is nothing running to crash. If it was rooted and you have a custom recovery, and if it will boot into recovery, then would be a chance. But rooting (actually unlocking the boatloader) will wipe the device, so doesn't offer a solution if you haven't already done it.
Nobody will repair the motherboard - they'll replace it, and then the photos are gone. And we don't have enough info to diagnose the problem - would probe. need to open the phone to do that.
Sorry, but this does not sound hopeful to me.

 

[joe71]

Sounds like motherboard damage. If you could get the device to stay on which seems you can't you could try transfer them to a computer, I back up all my photos now to my Google account and have started printing out hard copies, lost over 1,400 photos when my Galaxy S3 went south last year