Table of contents:
- Go to the computer to recover the data
- Or install specialized recovery programs
- Take advantage of application backups
- Connect a pendrive and a mouse to your mobile
- Duplicate the mobile screen on a TV or external monitor
- USB debugging and ADB commands - the last alternative
"Recover data from a mobile phone with a broken screen", "Recover data from a mobile that does not turn on", "Recover data from a mobile phone with a black screen"… Dozens of users carry out this type of queries daily on Google and other search engines. Recovering information from a broken mobile depends on the affected components. For example, it is not the same to recover data from a mobile with a broken screen than from another with a short-circuited motherboard. Before assessing the damage, we can resort to various methods to appropriate the information contained in the phone's memory. On this occasion we will show you some methods to recover data and photos from a damaged mobile.
Go to the computer to recover the data
The first method that we can resort to is precisely connecting the phone to a computer using a USB cable. If the device screen responds, the normal thing is that we can accept the operation to transfer data from the mobile to the phone.
Once we have connected the device to the computer, it will be enough to access the different folders to safeguard the information that we want to recover. For the photos taken with the camera we will have to resort to the DCIM folder. As for the rest of the applications, we leave you with a small list of some of the folders that we can access:
- Downloads: all downloads made to the device from the browser.
- WhatsApp / WhatsApp Business: all the elements belonging to WhatsApp, such as photos, videos, voice notes, backup copies and stickers.
- Telegram: all elements belonging to Telegram, such as photos, videos, voice notes and stickers.
- Movies: all the videos shared between the different video applications, such as Instagram or TikTok.
- Documents: all documents edited in office applications, such as Microsoft Office.
- sdcard: all files saved on the microSD card connected to the mobile phone.
Or install specialized recovery programs
If the memory of the phone has suffered some kind of damage, the only way to recover the files is to resort to specialized recovery programs. There are many tools that allow us to retrieve information from the phone, although most are paid or partially free.
We leave you below with a small list of applications that we can find for Windows and Android:
- Recuva (for Windows)
- Remo Recover (for Windows and Mac)
- Wondeshare MobileGo (for Android)
Take advantage of application backups
Another method that we can use is based on resorting to the backup copies made by certain applications automatically.
Applications such as Google Photos, Telegram, Google Drive or WhatsApp. By not being able to access from the phone itself, the only way is based on access through a computer or tablet.
Connect a pendrive and a mouse to your mobile
If the screen of our mobile phone has suffered some kind of damage (the image is partially shown, the touch does not work…), another way to recover the information from the phone is based on connecting a pendrive and a mouse to the device by means of a USB hub. In this way, we can transfer the information from the phone to the storage unit through the movements of the mouse.
We can do it through the native file explorer, which is usually installed by default on most phones (Huawei, Samsung, OnePlus, LG, Xiaomi…).
Duplicate the mobile screen on a TV or external monitor
Another alternative to which we can resort is based on connecting the telephone to an external monitor or television. In some high-end Samsung and Huawei mobiles, we can directly connect the phone to a television using a USB cable and an HDMI adapter to transform the interface into a window system very similar to Windows.
As for the rest of the brands, we can always use the Cast function of Android, which we can access from the quick settings bar of the system or through the settings.
USB debugging and ADB commands - the last alternative
The last method we can use to recover the information from a broken smartphone is based on resorting to ADB commands, which can only be used with active USB debugging. As this is a somewhat tedious process, from tuexperto.com we ignore any problem that the phone may present at the time of performing the steps that we will explain below. Before we get down to work, we recommend you take a look at the article where we explain how to activate USB debugging on your mobile and how to install the ADB tool on your computer.
With USB debugging active and the command machine turned on, all we will have to do is enter the following command to copy the files stored in the phone memory to the computer:
- adb pull directory path where we want to copy directory path where we want to save files
To copy the photographs taken with the phone's camera on the Windows Desktop, we can apply the following command.
- adb pull / storage / emulated / 0 / DCIM / Camera / * C: / Maria / Desktop
If what we want is to make a copy of the WhatsApp folder in the Windows Documents folder, the command to use is the following:
- adb pull / storage / emulated / 0 / WhatsApp / * C: / Maria / Documents
To know the list of folders housed in the phone directory we can use the following command:
- adb shell ls / storage / emulated / 0 /
Or this other:
- adb shell ls -R / storage / emulated / 0 /
