How to get photos off a broken phone

When a phone breaks, the handset is rarely what people are upset about. It is the photos. The good news is that pictures are stored on the main board inside the phone, not in the screen, so a smashed or dead phone very often still has everything on it. Work through the steps below in order, starting with the ones that cost nothing.

1. Check whether they are already backed up

Before you touch the broken phone, look on another device. Many people have a backup running without realising it.

• iPhone: sign in at icloud.com with your Apple ID and open Photos. If iCloud Photos was switched on, your pictures are there.
• Android: sign in at photos.google.com with your Google account. Samsung owners can also check their Samsung account.
• Messaging apps: photos sent on WhatsApp are often saved in its own backup too.

If everything is there, you can stop. Your pictures are safe whatever happens to the phone.

2. The screen is broken but the phone still works

If the phone rings, vibrates or lights up, it is running and only the display has failed. You have a few options.

• Plug it into a computer you have used with it before. A computer the phone already trusts may let you copy photos or make a backup without touching the screen.
• Take out the memory card. Some Android phones save photos to a microSD card. If yours has one, the pictures on it can be read in any card reader.
• Leave it on charge near your wifi. If a cloud backup was switched on, the phone may finish uploading on its own.

The usual stumbling block is the passcode. A phone will not hand over its files until it is unlocked, and you cannot unlock it if the touchscreen does not respond. That is the point where fitting a working screen becomes the simplest route.

3. The phone will not turn on

A phone that looks dead is often a phone with a flat battery, a failed charging port or a display that has stopped lighting up. Try a different cable and plug, and leave it charging for half an hour before you give up on it.

If it still shows nothing, the fault needs finding. In many cases a repair gets the phone running for long enough to copy everything off, even if you decide not to keep using it afterwards. We explain the common causes in our guide to a phone that will not turn on.

4. It has been in water

Do not charge it and do not keep pressing the power button. Electricity and moisture together are what do the lasting damage. Switch it off if you can and get it looked at quickly, because corrosion carries on spreading after the phone has dried. Our water damage guide covers the first few minutes in detail.

What not to do

• Do not factory reset it. A reset erases the photos you are trying to save.
• Do not keep guessing the passcode. Too many wrong attempts can lock you out, and some phones are set to erase themselves.
• Do not put it in rice and wait a week. It does little for the inside of the phone and costs you time.
• Do not pay for "recovery software" that promises to pull photos from a phone that will not switch on. Software cannot talk to a phone that has no power.

When a repair shop can help

Getting photos back is usually a repair job, not a software one. Depending on the fault, that can mean fitting a screen so you can unlock the phone, replacing a battery or charging port so it powers up, or repairing the board itself. That last one is fine soldering work, which we describe on our board repair page.

It is only fair to say what cannot be done. Modern phones encrypt their storage, so the passcode is still needed once the phone is working. And if the storage chip itself has failed, the photos may be gone. No honest repairer can promise a result before looking at the phone.

How we can help

If you are in or around High Wycombe, bring the phone to our shop at 150 Desborough Road, open 7 days a week from 8am to 10pm. We check it for free, tell you what is wrong and what it would cost, and work on a no fix, no fee basis. You can read more on our data recovery page, or simply walk in with the phone and its passcode.