Hello,
Unfortunately the screen on my works trusty/knackered S3 Mini died yesterday. Looks to be a pretty common issue and tried whats seems to be the usual things to bring it back to life but to no avail.
So I want to get 6yrs of contacts and messages out of it. And ideally onto another phone.
Me being me, I didn't (knowingly) back anything up and naively thought it'd be a case of hooking it up to a PC and extracting all the goodness inside, files named Contacts, and SMS Messages - evidently this doesn't seem to be the case and doesn't work like that!
So what are my options? Appears to be various ways of doing it but all software/options seem dodgy and/or complicated from what I can tell.
Is there software / process that people rate? Or is it better just to take it to a phone shop and let the do it? If so, is there a price range I should d be looking at (having previously been stung when unlocking a phone)?
Ta for help,
TBH, i'd try a bit harder to simply plug into a PC and extract what you want (sorry)..
It's bound to be in a folder somewhere, and unless you work for M16, your phone should simply operate like a storage device. Getting it unlocked with a knackered screen may e an issue though.
I guess the lesson here is to SIMPLY SYNC YOUR GOOGLE ACCOUNT WITH YOUR PHONE AND ALL IS STORED IN THE CLOUD.
Honestly, it amazes me the number of people who don't do this! buy a new phone...log in with google... new phone INSTANTLY becomes your old phone...
(Again, not what you what to hear, but lesson for next time)
DrP
Are your contacts not all on Google?
If you access your Google account on a computer, can you not see all your contacts there? If they are there, when you get a replacement phone & set it up the contacts will magically appear from your account.
Regarding SMS messages - you might be stuffed or find it pretty difficult.
Looking online, replacement screens aren't very expensive - it might be worth finding someone local to replace the screen for you, if you really must have the messages?
ebay screens are about £15-£20 so shouldn't be that hard to replace for some labour cost on top. Depends how much you want the data on it.
This way you would actually getting a working phone again and you can get it set right for the next time you break it
might be able to recover some stuff from google or from plugging it in to a computer but not sure how easy that would be.
Where are you based?
The issue you may have is that you generally have to have the phone unlocked to be able to use it as a mass storage device to retrieve the data. Is the screen totally dead? or just not responding to touch?
If it's the latter, you can plug in a USB mouse via a microusb to usb converter which will allow you to unlock and sync what you need.
J
Have you logged into your Google account online on a computer?
Then go to:
contacts.google.com
photos.google.com
messages.google.com
keep.google.com
Or, just fire up your new phone and sign in with your Google account - it will then take you through a new phone process and transfer it all over automatically.
(Etc)
Mrs IRC dropped her G7 Power and cracked the screen. Local shop did same day replacement for £60.
Can you actually see the screen, or is it totally blank? If you can see but it's non responsive, you can get a usb to micro usb adapter and plug a mouse into it to control it. I've done this a couple of times with cracked screen phones.
If you access your Google account on a computer, can you not see all your contacts there? If they are there, when you get a replacement phone & set it up the contacts will magically appear from your account.
Regarding SMS messages – you might be stuffed or find it pretty difficult.
I've not got much to add to this to be honest, if you've synced to a Google account when you set up the phone then you're golden beyond SMSes and if you didn't then you've only got yourself to blame for any data loss. The time to worry about backups was six years ago, restoring from a backup is routine but recovering lost data is both difficult and expensive.
If you don't have three copies of any data you care about in two separate geographical locations then you need to have a rethink.