Yesterday two voice messages (I think they are called voice notes in WhatsApp) were received. Unfortunately the new 'potential' contact was blocked. This seems to have resulted in these messages being deleted at the same time. I did open (download) and hear them.

I have done the following:

(1) Went to Internal Storage > WhatsApp > Media > WhatsApp Voice Notes on the phone. There appear to be none of these deleted voice notes here. The files here are '.opus' ones.

(2) Tried some apps like Dr.Fone and EaseUS Mobi Saver for Android. I selected USB Debugging from Developer Options but these apps ask me for root access. I have no trusted software for this. In any case I suspect both these apps will ask me for payment to recover data so I am not proceeding with this course of action.

(3) There are some youtube videos for this problem but not all are in English! I think the basic line of action is to delete all the data and recover it again. I have no confidence in this course of action.

Once again it is my intention to recover only the what I believe to be deleted voice messages (WhatsApp Voice Notes) from what had been a blocked number using WhatsApp yesterday.

I have no 'Chat backup' set in WhatsApp...

I have also just downloaded Opus Player from Google Play and it does not automatically find these voice messages although it finds others - both incoming and outgoing.

This phone has been upgraded to Android 8.0.0.

Any ideas?