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Recovery

andymar

Lurker
Dec 7, 2019
8
1
Hi, my huawei p30 bottom of the screen broke which means cannot use touch screen, it still boots up as can feel it vibration, at moment. It not going to be cost affect to repair it, hope that you can recommend software to retrieve my stuff,

Tried a few all need something in the phone to do this, any help please
 
The main problem is presumably that the screen is locked (and fingerprint isn't available because you've rebooted, and it will want you to enter a PIN or password after rebooting before it enables the fingerprint scanner). For obvious security reasons you can't copy data from the phone over USB without unlocking it first: this is true whether you use ADB (USB debugging) or MTP (USB "file transfer mode"). So if you can't unlock the phone that's it, end of story.

So how can you unlock it? The easiest way is probably to use a USB keyboard: connect it to the phone via a USB C-to-A adapter and you should be able to control the phone using at least the cursor keys and enter key. I have unlocked a phone with a dead screen this way: the trick was to move my "finger" to a definite location (top-right of the keypad) by using the up and right keys, then once I was sure I knew where it was I'd move to the number I needed by counting how many times I pressed each cursor key (e.g. down twice to select "9"), pressing "enter" when I had highlighted the number I wanted, then using the cursor keys to move to the next number, etc. I practiced this first on a phone with a working screen before moving to the one with the broken screen.

Once you've done that, the rest may depend on how your phone is set up. For example, if your phone is set to allow file transfers the moment you plug it into a computer, just plug it into a computer and you are away. If not you will still need to enable other things, and doing that "blind" will be tricky. It will be easiest if you can mirror your phone to a TV or monitor. The problem there is if you need to use the USB socket for mirroring (e.g. a USB-C to HDMI adapter) and need to use the same socket to control it (via a keyboard or mouse). I did manage this, by a process of swapping between seeing and doing (tap some keys, display the screen, plan my next move, tap some more keys, rinse and repeat). The breakthrough was the point where I managed to pair a bluetooth keyboard with the phone (a mouse would also work), so I could interact with the phone and see what I was doing at the same time.

Of course whether this is enough, or whether it is necessary, depends on what you want to retrieve. If the stuff you want is synced with a cloud service (like contacts, photos if you use Google Photos or similar) then all of this fuss is unnecessary: you can just resync them with a new device. If you want to retrieve your SMS then you'll need to install and run a SMS backup app (if you haven't already done that), because you won't be able to copy the SMS database directly over USB. Without knowing what stuff you wish to retrieve it's impossible to give more advice. But whatever you wish to do, and however your phone is set up, unlocking the display is the first step.
 
Upvote 0
The main problem is presumably that the screen is locked (and fingerprint isn't available because you've rebooted, and it will want you to enter a PIN or password after rebooting before it enables the fingerprint scanner). For obvious security reasons you can't copy data from the phone over USB without unlocking it first: this is true whether you use ADB (USB debugging) or MTP (USB "file transfer mode"). So if you can't unlock the phone that's it, end of story.

So how can you unlock it? The easiest way is probably to use a USB keyboard: connect it to the phone via a USB C-to-A adapter and you should be able to control the phone using at least the cursor keys and enter key. I have unlocked a phone with a dead screen this way: the trick was to move my "finger" to a definite location (top-right of the keypad) by using the up and right keys, then once I was sure I knew where it was I'd move to the number I needed by counting how many times I pressed each cursor key (e.g. down twice to select "9"), pressing "enter" when I had highlighted the number I wanted, then using the cursor keys to move to the next number, etc. I practiced this first on a phone with a working screen before moving to the one with the broken screen.

Once you've done that, the rest may depend on how your phone is set up. For example, if your phone is set to allow file transfers the moment you plug it into a computer, just plug it into a computer and you are away. If not you will still need to enable other things, and doing that "blind" will be tricky. It will be easiest if you can mirror your phone to a TV or monitor. The problem there is if you need to use the USB socket for mirroring (e.g. a USB-C to HDMI adapter) and need to use the same socket to control it (via a keyboard or mouse). I did manage this, by a process of swapping between seeing and doing (tap some keys, display the screen, plan my next move, tap some more keys, rinse and repeat). The breakthrough was the point where I managed to pair a bluetooth keyboard with the phone (a mouse would also work), so I could interact with the phone and see what I was doing at the same time.

Of course whether this is enough, or whether it is necessary, depends on what you want to retrieve. If the stuff you want is synced with a cloud service (like contacts, photos if you use Google Photos or similar) then all of this fuss is unnecessary: you can just resync them with a new device. If you want to retrieve your SMS then you'll need to install and run a SMS backup app (if you haven't already done that), because you won't be able to copy the SMS database directly over USB. Without knowing what stuff you wish to retrieve it's impossible to give more advice. But whatever you wish to do, and however your phone is set up, unlocking the display is the first step.


Try anything thanks
 
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