Help how to find contacts in internal storage on xperia z1

[lilacstar]

my xperia z1 has finally broken but i can connect it to my laptop fine and ive copied all my media files to my laptop, the only thing I cant find is my contact details/phone numbers.
They are defiinately on the phone and not the SD card ive looked everywhere and cannot see them ive tried clicking on data and subfolders just say empty. its so frustrating is there any way i can retrieve them? thanks

 

[Hadron]

Unless the phone is rooted you can't see the folders that contain these data.

How broken is it? If you can activate USB debugging there are options (and if you can connect a keyboard via a usb otg adapter and use MHL to peek at the screen you'd be surprised at what is possible). But if all you can do is view the "sdcard" partition over USB then you won't find them there.

I assume you did not store them as Google contacts or sync them with Google? If you did then you are safe, as they are backed up and can be easily downloaded to another device.

 

[lilacstar]

Hi hadron,
thanks for your reply. its an old handset that kept freezing and I dropped it so now screen is shattered and touch screen not working so cant access anything but connecting it to my laptop i can still access everything as normal. I took the SD card out and its in another handset now but I know my contacts are stored in the phone.
Im not very techy bu no I dont think the phone is rooted...is this something someone could help me with if I went to a phone shop or a store?

 

[Hadron]

Maybe, if you have a phone shop where people are prepared to do a bit of work themselves rather than just sending things off for repair. In the latter case they'll probably want to replace the screen and may well reset the device in the process (wiping your contacts while costing you a lot of money).

And MHL adapter allows you to connect your phone to a TV via a HDMI cable. I expect you need a 5 pin one for anything other than a Samsung. An OTG cable allows you to plug a keyboard or mouse into the phone. The tricky bit is that you can't do both at the same time. The best bet is if you can pair a Bluetooth keyboard or mouse with the phone: then you can view the screen via MHL and control the phone via BT. That would let you for example export the contacts to a sd card, which you could put in a new phone and import them from. It takes patience, but is possible.

 

[lilacstar]

I cant turn my bluetooth on my phone as its frozen so not sure that would work, i know i would not be able to do this on my own anyway.thanks for yuor advice!

 

[Slug]

Download and install Xperia Companion on your PC. That may allow you to back up your contacts, if the phone isn't completely inoperative.