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Help Screen is broken; how to recover my files?
- Thread starter murshid
- Start date
Does the phone support screen mirroring via USB (i.e. if you connect it to a display via a USB lead or USB to HDMI)? Was the touchscreen still working? And can you still unlock it?
If the answer to all of these is "yes" you could try connecting to a display then installing something like "wifi file explorer" (which I've not used for years but still exists in the Play Store), which may allow you to copy you files over a WiFi network. Or copy them to some cloud storage of your choice.
If not it gets tricky. I did once manage to get files off a phone with a completely broken screen by swapping between connecting a display via USB (so I could see what I'd done/where I was in the UI) and connecting a keyboard (so I could use cursor and enter keys to move the pointer and click - all while blind), but it took a lot of time and effort. Also I had another similar phone with a working display that I could practice with first. I also used a USB mouse for some things, but that's even trickier to use blind! I finally got the job done by pairing a bluetooth mouse to the phone, after which I could control the phone while still mirroring the display. And since then I've always had a bluetooth mouse which is paired to my phone, just in case I ever find myself in this position (because it wasn't my phone I was trying to recover data from).
If the answer to all of these is "yes" you could try connecting to a display then installing something like "wifi file explorer" (which I've not used for years but still exists in the Play Store), which may allow you to copy you files over a WiFi network. Or copy them to some cloud storage of your choice.
If not it gets tricky. I did once manage to get files off a phone with a completely broken screen by swapping between connecting a display via USB (so I could see what I'd done/where I was in the UI) and connecting a keyboard (so I could use cursor and enter keys to move the pointer and click - all while blind), but it took a lot of time and effort. Also I had another similar phone with a working display that I could practice with first. I also used a USB mouse for some things, but that's even trickier to use blind! I finally got the job done by pairing a bluetooth mouse to the phone, after which I could control the phone while still mirroring the display. And since then I've always had a bluetooth mouse which is paired to my phone, just in case I ever find myself in this position (because it wasn't my phone I was trying to recover data from).