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Help Recovering Contacts - Broken Phone

B

bgettel

Lurker
Hello All,

A family member with a Verizon Galaxy S3 dropped his phone and the screen is completely broken - almost no image and touch does not work. Verizon shipped him a new phone (S5) but he never backed up his contacts via any method.

Is there some way to get the contacts off the old phone and onto the new? I've found a few pieces of software that are either very expensive for this task or are free and malware-infected garbage.

The phone will charge and connect to a PC, but I can't find the location of the contacts.

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

BG
 
By chance, did they opt into the option to back their contacts up with Google?

If so, all of their contacts are safely stopped on Google's servers.

You can check this using this site:
https://www.google.com/contacts

And logging I'm using their gmail credentials.

If not, does the phone still respond to touches? If it does, you can use your computer to access the phone as long as you have USB debugging enabled

http://code.google.com/p/androidscreencast/

If you are rooted, the screen doesn't even have to respond to touches as you can use the mouse/keyboard to interact with the phone.

Simply navigate to the contracts app and then (on my device, ymmv) go to phone> menu> manage contacts> import/export contracts> export to sdcard... And then select the account you wish to export. (in the case that they aren't backed up to Google, you likely want to select "phone" or the equivalent)

Then place the sdcard in the new device and restore them with the same method you backed them up (phone> menu> import/export> import)
 
Last edited:
Lordvincent 90 said:
By chance, did they opt into the option to back their contacts up with Google?

If so, all of their contacts are safely stopped on Google's servers.

You can check this using this site:
https://www.google.com/contacts

And logging I'm using their gmail credentials.

If not, does the phone still respond to touches? If it does, you can use your computer to access the phone as long as you have USB debugging enabled

http://code.google.com/p/androidscreencast/

If you are rooted, the screen doesn't even have to respond to touches as you can use the mouse/keyboard to interact with the phone.

Simply navigate to the contracts app and then (on my device, ymmv) go to phone> menu> manage contacts> import/export contracts> export to sdcard... And then select the account you wish to export. (in the case that they aren't backed up to Google, you likely want to select "phone" or the equivalent)

Then place the sdcard in the new device and restore them with the same method you backed them up (phone> menu> import/export> import)
Click to expand...

Unfortunately this phone belongs to a non-tech person. No back up to Google, Verizon's Cloud, or Samsung's cloud were set up. The phone is not rooted and the phone is so broken that the screen does not respond to touch and you can only see a very faint image around the top of the display.

The phone will connect to a PC and I can see all the folders for files, music, pictures, etc. but I can't find contacts anywhere.
 
I think you are at a dead end, if there's no touch sensitivity, no google backup or any backup at all, then you are left with the option of buying a new screen to get your contacts.
 
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