How to access data on phone with broken screen?

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)

Keneda

@arubislander
I tested this telling me that if it failed, that would not be dramatic (no risk of ditching UT like this), and if it succeeded, i would be very happy, and that cost nothing to try

BarryT

@Keneda Thanks for the info but I think that will give this a miss. I don't want to push my luck, and am content with what I have achieved so far.

Keneda

@BarryT
Again, you can't break UT trying this ^^
If that fails, just delete previously copyed file/folder, and restore backed history-deamon file.

But if your ok without, nevermind ^^

BarryT

@RayCulp PM sent to you.

*salomegomez

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