Unresponsive Smartphones – Getting the data off
Below are three phone enquiries we received from people needing to recover data from their Samsung, Apple and Nokia smartphones. Our main smartphone data recovery page can be found at https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery-from-mobile-devices-phones-tablets-etc/, whilst manufacturer specific pages are below.
Samsung
Samsung S6 Phone Won’t Switch On. Hi, I put my Samsung s6 edge in the washing machine and now it won’t turn on, I’ve tried hooking it up to my laptop but nothing is found. Can you recover all pictures, videos, music and contacts from the phone ? If so how much does this cost ? Thank you
Actually, the chances of recovering the information from a phone that’s been through a washing machine are surprisingly good. Smartphones are quite resilient and with any luck the case will have protected the internal electronics of the smartphone from any serious impact. Assuming that this is correct and there is no physical damage to the phone we will be able to determine how far the water has penetrated inside the case and then dry the necessary areas out in the correct way. This may be all that’s necessary and recovery of the pictures, videos and all other files will be straightforward.
If the phone has been damaged by it’s time in the washing machine, all is not lost. We can remove the outer casing of the phone and read the information straight from the memory chips or via the phone’s motherboard. Go to our section on Samsung phone recovery here.
Apple iPhone
My iPhone 5s was recently liquid damaged. It had been backed up about a week beforehand, but there are some important videos I was sent via whatsapp that I need to retrieve, as well as some voice notes that were taken before the backup but have not appeared on my new phone.
Assuming there is no damage to the iPhone’s memory, we should be able to retrieve the data from the phone for you. I’m curious as to why some of your data (ie. the voice notes and Whatsapp videos) wasn’t backed up? Perhaps it was deleted? Fortunately, in most cases, deleted data isn’t actually deleted from your phone, it’s simply moved into a collective area known as “unallocated” or “free” space which means the phone can use this space to store photos you may take or Apps you may download in the future. Provided the data you want to retrieve still exists in free space and hasn’t been overwritten we will be able to recover it for you – go to our iPhone recovery page here.
Nokia Lumia
Unresponsive phone, won’t power up. Nokia Lumia 925. Wish to recover months of photos of my 6 month old daughter that I unfortunately did not back up. Both are very important for work that I am doing.
We get great results when recovering data – including photos – from all Nokia Lumia phones (including the 925!) and can do this in one of three ways depending on what’s wrong with your phone – take a look at our Nokia phone recovery page here.
More Help and Advice
Go here for more Help and Advice pages about phone and hard drive problems, and also check out older enquiries in the Data Clinic Archive.
