How to access data on phone with broken screen?

BarryT

Hi All,
I'm looking for advice. Today I dropped my Pixel 3a and broke the screen. The screen is completely black with no signs of life. I cannot see if the phone is On or Off, or what mode it is in.
I would like to be able to access the file system so that I can copy the photographs etc to my laptop. But, when I connect the broken phone using USB, I am unable to unlock the screen so am unable to access the file system.
Can anyone suggest how I can use the USB connection to force unlock the phone?

My phone has an up-to-date install of Focal. My laptop runs Linux Mint 20.
Thanks.

xet7

@BarryT

Maybe try some USB-C to USB3 adapter to add USB mouse and USB keyboard to open screen blind? I don't know would some USB-C to display adapters work.

Or maybe ask some smartphone screen repair service, can they replace screen?

xet7

Or maybe this:

https://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/userguide/advanceduse/screencasting.html

arubislander

@xet7 The Pixel 3a does not support display out, unfortunately.
@BarryT had you enabled developer mode any time before dropping your phone?
If not, the you could try blindly booting into recovery mode. ADB should be enabled in that mode.
Them you could adb into your device, mount the /data partition and adb pull whatever you needed from the phone to your computer.

MrT10001

@arubislander I concur. I would attempt a screen removal too and check the connector as the screen is dark. A smashed screen that powers on you may get enough working. to recover data with

BarryT

@arubislander Thanks for the reply.
I cannot remember if I have enabled Developer mode. Running "adb devices" in a terminal on the laptop does not show my phone to be attached.
What should I do to boot into Recovery Mode? The broken screen means that I cannot shut down the phone, nor do I get any feedback on my actions.

BarryT

@xet7 Thanks for the reply.
The cost of a replacement screen is much higher than a replacement phone (second hand) so I have not considered it.
I shall try and connect a keyboard and mouse but the blank screen means that I have no feedback on my actions. Can you suggest what gestures I need to perform to unlock the screen in this way?

BarryT

@MrT10001 Thanks for the reply.
I shall try this as my last resort; the online instructions suggest that it can be quite tricky.

arubislander

@BarryT Make sure you device is powered off.

Then press and hold both the power button and volume down button at the same time for about 2 seconds. Then press the volume up button twice. Then press the power button once. Wait about 20 seconds and your phone should have booted into recovery mode.

You will know you have been successful if it shows with adb devices.

kugiigi

Yeah, booting to recovery seems to be the most doable thing to do without spending anything. You can pull /data/user-data and /data/system-data so that you can restore them to your new device. Ideally, you tar them before pulling to avoid random errors when pulling. Your device should have enough space though.

RayCulp

@BarryT said in How to access data on phone with broken screen?:

The cost of a replacement screen is much higher than a replacement phone (second hand) so I have not considered it.

If you're able to rescue your data successfully and are not planning to replace the screen, please contact me via pm before you throw it away. I might be interested in it.

BarryT

@arubislander Thanks for the help. I did finally manage to get into Recovery Mode but, when accessing the phone system, found that the /data was completely empty! Either the phone is more broken than I realised, or I have accidentally wiped the original install during my random button pressing as I initially tried to get into the phone.
Am, I missing something?
Please note that I updated the phone from Xenial to Focal rather than doing a re-install. Could that have moved the data somewhere strange?

My apologies for not getting back sooner but I had to leave the phone for several days to let the phone battery completely run down so that I could be sure it was turned fully off.

Keneda

@BarryT
Did you do that :

@arubislander said in How to access data on phone with broken screen?:

mount the /data partition

?

If no, i red somewhere else here that data folder seems empty.

Edit :
@amazones said in /data folder not present in recovery mode:

When I boot into recovery by pressing vol+ and powering phone on, the data directory is present but it's empty.

@TheVancedGamer said in /data folder not present in recovery mode:

you can run mount -a in adb shell to populate /data

BarryT

@Keneda Oops! My mistake! I shall try again in a short while.

BarryT

Yes! That seems to have (mostly) worked: I now have 'user-data' copied off my broken phone and onto my laptop. Thank you everyone for your help.

Now the bad news:- Pushing the data onto my replacement phone did not work very well.
I bought a replacement Pixel 3a of the same spec. Down grading to Android version 9 was a bit of a struggle as the Android Flash Tool kept failing repeatedly due to a 'Network Error' while downloading the new image. I eventually got it too work by swapping to a computer that had an ethernet connection to my router, rather than using wi-fi, and that worked first time. Installation of Touch (version 20.04) worked well, the only small problem being that the phone was not automatically recognised when I first started the installer. I was also able to push the 'user-data' from my laptop onto my newly set-up replacement phone, but this broke several of the installed applications! Gallery and Music would not open at all, and Messages was so corrupted that I could not read the texts. The only good result was that Contacts worked and I have been able to export a copy to my laptop.
I understand that there is quite a big difference between the operating systems on Xenial and Focal, so I can only assume that there is also a difference in the contents of the hidden config files in the 'user-data' folder between a phone that has been upgraded compared with a phone that is a fresh install. And that it is these differences that have caused certain apps to fail.
I have reinstalled Focal on the new phone, and wiped the user data. I now have a phone that works as expected. I shall copy photos, music, and contacts over using the standard MTP service. I will also have to accept that the old text messages are lost. I am content with this; a 95% recovery of data from a broken phone is a good result. Thank you all again.

arubislander

@BarryT You would have had a better experience if you had flashed xenial to your phone and then updated to focal.

You see, lots of things are different under the hood between xenial and focal. And the first run of a new focal install / update runs an upgrade / migration script for all impacted app settings and configs. (These are most prominently the default pre-installed apps.) But since you flashed focal and then restored your xenial data, no such migration took place, and you were left with a broken system.

Things being as they are, you can restore your photo and music data selectively, either via MTP or with adb push. If you wanted to retain your contacts and texts, then a clean flash to xenial (with wipe!) then a data restore, and finally an upgrade to focal, would be the way to go. But be warned that some people have experienced some issues going that route as well.

Keneda

@BarryT

I will also have to accept that the old text messages are lost

Not sure about that, i don't think the database changed for messaging history between 16 and 20.04.

@lduboeuf can you give some light here ?

In meantime, try to copy your saved history.sqlite file and its "attachements" folder to your new device, and backup then delete history-daemon.lock file, then reboot, open messaging app, and wait ^^

arubislander

@Keneda The database might

@Keneda said in How to access data on phone with broken screen?:

Not sure about that, i don't think the database changed for messaging history between 16 and 20.04.

The DB might not have changed, but the new install has a different device ID than the previous one. So while the messages would be there, they would not be visible, until the device-id's were updated to the new one with an SQL statement. Granted this would be an issue also on a new xenial install.

Keneda

@arubislander
Surprisingly, i had no problem migrating my history database from my MX4 to my N5, even if i am sure the device ID is not the same, and red somewhere here that migrating message between diffrent devices is a pain in the bottom ^^

arubislander

@Keneda Then I should change my post to say might have a different device ID.(And this is not the Android device ID we're talking about, but an internal one, specific to the app)