That’s not a request, it’s an order!
Losing your phone is one thing, it’s probably insured and you’ll either get your phone back or a replacement, great – you have a working phone, but aren’t you forgetting something?
What about the content on your phone?
Your photo’s? Your picture messages? Your diary? Your videos? They’re what make the phone yours aren’t they?So how do we get that back? My answer is searching google for a working carbonite offer code It’s not just a loss that will mean you don’t have these but all manner of accidents!
I’ve just spent the morning extracting data from a phone that was dropped, and the screen completely died.
In the normal course of events I’d plug it in to a computer, get off what I could (photo’s by treating it as as memory card and hope that contacts and text messages would sync to the Motorola or Nokia suite as appropriate).In this case there was some bad, and some good luck!
First the bad, the phone wasn’t set into sync mode – it just wanted to be treated as a memory card. I knew this was an option in the phone, but with no screen how was I going to turn it on? A stroke of good luck… The phone was a Nokia N85!
What’s so special about it being an N85? The N85 has two slots on top, a USB Sync/Charge and a Video-Out! 1 cable later (and some rearrangement of furniture) the TV is in the office and I’m able to use the TV as a screen for the phone!! It was quite impressive!
I successfully extracted all the data except photo messages, I had to go into each individual photo message and save the image to the memory card then copy that back to the computer.
Now what?
Well we’re not going to lug a TV around to use as a screen are we? I rang up a local phone repair shop and dropped it in just over 2 hours ago. It’s ready for collection already… New LCD and new Lens all fitted… Hurrah!
For reference Swindon Phone Fix on Commercial Road, Swindon did this!
photo credit:Â Glen Bowman
That’s some good advice… one of those hindsight thingies.
On an almost related note – you know when your phone falls down the loo? (I should really stop keeping mine in my back pocket) The best way to dry out the innards of a mobile phone is to seal it into a jar of rice… sounds weird but works a charm.
I understand most current and high-end (and expensive) phones have slot provisions for a micro-SD card where you can save your photos, videos and music. Furthermore, messages and contact details can alternatively be saved on your phones SIM card. These items are usually safe from damage in a phone accident and your data is easily recovered through a card reader. Insert your SIM card to another phone and viola! your messages and contacts are viewable on the other phone.
@ Kellie
That’s true, I have one myself…
Whilst the photos, video and music will probably come in a standard format. The photo messages, settings, ringtones etc won’t (and are quite often stored on the phone by default!
Saving to the SIM limits the number of contacts you can store (and how many characters they’re allowed in their name) and normally one number per person – SMS storage is similarly limited.
Even if you do manage to store to an external card, it may be in a proprietary format for just the maker of your mobile phone. So getting a good backup system is important that you could install on a new phone is also important.
Personally, I backup to my SD card and to an online file service using a third party application.. I can access the files from anywhere!
Oh so man times have I lost data due to a broken phone! I’ll never make that mistake again, everything is religously backed up, particulary contacts. It takes forever to re-collect everybody’s contact data. You always think that something like this won’t happen to you but believe me, it could!
probably the best advice i have had all year!! except that it is about a week too late 🙁 my son got hold of my iphone, put it between his chompers and crunch… right through the screen to the inards. it had not been sync’ed for a month. Grrrr. You live and learn. That will only happen once.