Recovering data from broken screened blade

[Guest clearvision]

Hey

I've just spent ~ 30mins searching for solutions but not really got anywhere so I'm going to have to make a topic, sorry!

My blade packed up yesterday - the screen has broken (not the digitizer) and shows a mainly black screen with a few bits of colour.

I need a phone so I've gone out and picked up the Huawei Ascend G300 for a reasonable price from Vodafone UK.

Now it's been a while since I backed up my blade - I'm just wondering what I can do to transfer my data?

I'm running (was running? :( ) Cyanogenmod7 nightly ~73 Gingerbread (I think) for the blade. I was happy with this build and so I stuck with it. I have Clockworkmod recovery installed along with the apps Titanium backup & restore and SMS backup and restore.

I think all my contacts are synced to my google account (hope so anyway!).

I think ideally I'll mirror my blade on the Huawei. However I think the only things I really want to grab from my blade are the SMS/MMS messages & contacts. The remaining stuff apps etc is not too important. All photos are on my SD card - I imagine the messages are on the device itself?

What can I do to get this? Is there a way of running apps from my computer? (sounds ridiculous, probably not possible). Can I use a nandroid backup through CMR to produce an image of my phone to take to the Huawei? (Probably also ridiculous as they are different devices & different roms - though both running Gingerbread).

Many thanks for any help on this!

[Guest i am not a hacker]

For your contacts, they should be kept on the Google account so when you sign in on the Huawei, the contacts can be restored.

Messages I don't think you can do without another blade.

You can copy everything from the SD by booting into CWM, going to advanced, then mount storage or something similar. As you won't be able to see, I can tell you the specific instructions if you need it.

Hope that Helped.

[Guest clearvision]

Thanks for your reply!

Mounting the SD isn't a problem - I can do that from the Huawei.

Is there any way to mount the internal storage? Or use a program to extract the external storage? Then use some software to pull the messages out?

I think you're saying that I'd nandroid backup using CMR then restore on another blade and thus my messages would be preserved? Is there no way to do this on another phone/on a computer?

[Guest i am not a hacker]

Not as far as I know of, sorry. However in the mounts and storage parts, you can mount different parts such as system and data.

You could try that.

[Guest clearvision]

Thanks again.

I figured I may be able to do that - I was thinking that If I could mount /data - I may be able to extract the SMS data base - put it in an XML which SMS backup & restore can use - then use the app to update my new phone.

Problem is - I can't seem to negotiate the menu to allow this to happen. My blade is currently without a sim and a memory card. I have:

Powered on the phone holding down on the vol button

Pressed down on the volume 6 times to get to mounts & storage

Pressed home

Pressed home again

Should this work? Or have I got the command wrong? My PC doesn't pick anything up after this. The computer shows drivers installing but nothing actually mounts

[Guest shmizan]

look, you can access any partition of your phone (system, data..) by fastboot. like creating a nandroid (clockworkmod) backup.

gives you a .img file you can extract with "unyaffs-winready"

google the fastboot commands and unyaffs-winready and you shall be set

[Guest clearvision]

Cheers Shmizan - I feel this would be a long way round? And sadly I'm not all that competent at using a command line interface

Is this app going to solve my issues? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.handyandy.appextractor

If I can get a nandroid backup this app will then extract data from the messaging app included on the nandroid backup from the blade and restore it on the Huawei? Or am I dreaming?

[Guest flshg]

Little idea that might be useful somehow. If you have the android sdk installed on your computer, you can connect to the blade via usb and extract files using the file explorer within eclipse if I remember rightly. You can also get screen grabs, so at a pinch you at least know what screen the blade is showing.

[Guest shmizan]

unyaffs

Cheers Shmizan - I feel this would be a long way round? And sadly I'm not all that competent at using a command line interface

Is this app going to solve my issues? https://play.google....<br /><br />If I can get a nandroid backup this app will then extract data from the messaging app included on the nandroid backup from the blade and restore it on the Huawei? Or am I dreaming?

exactly the opposite. step 1 plug usb. step 2 type only one fastboot command. step 3 type only one unyaffs command.

you get the content of your data partition stripped naked.

if you KNOW you can take out the data you need from the stripped partitions of your phones go with this.

other solutions brought up here are useful if you need to use your screen to extract the needed information (meaning it's not directly accessible from the data partition).

if you're so afraid of 2 simple commands, the last post from flshg might be the way to go.

[Guest clearvision]

Thanks for all the useful replies, still not quite there and beginning to think about giving up.

I don't have usd debugging enabled on the blade which is restricting my options. I believe that if I had it enabled I could get an img through fast boot and then use unyaffs to extract the data (I've seen a post regarding this here http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1370349).

Or I could indeed use a display option as suggested by flshg (I found one on. Youtube http://www.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DQtB36BTllwY&ei=-_GyT6fRIIiH8gOCr5imCQ&usg=AFQjCNGggEsyIATMdVZuPf2SpVGlp9Ui1Q) but this doesn't see the device when it's booted normally And I presume this is because debugging is not activated. Though the viewer program does see the device when in clockwork recovery it cannot display a screenshot.

The app I posted above has compatibility issues with cm7 (due to the structure of the cm database apparently) and thus didn't work.

I have managed to do a nandroid back up but thus far don't know how to extract the data i need.

I either need to:

Be able to extract the SMS data from the backup (unlikely due to the database issues with cm)

Be able to turn USB debugging on (I've tried guessin where the option would be settings/applications/development/USB debugging but I don't know the structure of the menu and so may be pressing in the wrong place - I've been comparing it to my huawei running a stock rom so no surprises it didn't work!

Or

Give up? After all I have a back up from August 2011 through sms b&r it would be 8 months of stuff lost but none of it is too important. Just annoying that I can't transfer it!

Edited May 16, 2012 by clearvision

[Guest flshg]

I think you could try unyaffs on the nandroid, other people should know more about whether its possible. If you can't get your data out, as a last option you could try editing the settings.db file extracted from your nandroid, add a "adb_enabled" record (set to "1") to the secure table and flash it back to your phone in clockworkmod. That should enable usb debugging, enabling you to do more stuff.

[Guest clearvision]

Ahh I've just realised my nandroid backup was incomplete. I have now extracted the image to my pc and have attempted to restore using this guide http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1370349&page=2 but it's still not worked.

Any ideas on what the problem Could be and how is might solve it? I guess it's cause I'm coming from CM7.

I may try editing and reflashing to attempt to get Ian debugging to work then I'm done!

[Guest clearvision]

After a couple of days of heavy reading I can see now that I was quite naive on how to approach this! I needed to understand how adb works and the utilities available to help me do this. Thanks for the tips but I have now come to the conclusion that I'm not going to be able to do this.

I've manager to extract a nandroid backup from the blade - then extract the data.img from this backup using unyaffs to get to the mmssms.db database (which stores the sms data). I first tried to use super manager to overwrite the db on my Huawei - this didn't work the first time - the sms app stayed blank. Then I tried overwriting the telephony.db too however this made the Huawei fail to load (boot screen just kept playing).

Then I downloaded an SQLite browser and found that both of these databases are seemingly empty. I have no idea why this would be the case. I've googled extensively and can't work out why this would have happened - the last time the phone was on the SMS db was definitely intact and the messaging app was working fully. If this would have populated in Sqlite browser I'd feel comfortable in attempting to put it into a format that I can push to the Huawei.

In an ideal world - this would have been visible in SQlite and I'd have just pushed it to the Huawei and I'd have been done!

Is there a reason why this would not be visible? The databases file in \data\data\com.android.providers.telephony\databases is accompanied by mmssms.db-shm, mmssms.db-wal these files were not mentioned in a lot of guides I looked at. What are they?

Finally if I could only get USB debugging enabled I'd be home and dry using droid@screen. But I can't for the life of me remember what the menu looked like on my rom to allow me to blind click it on. I've done some detailled searching but it seems unless debugging is enabled you can't get into the phone to toggle the usb on/off. Therefore this option is closed.

In an ideal world I'd have USB debugging enabled and an SMS backup + restore would have been easy with Droid@Screen.

The only other option was to edit settings.db to toggle usb on and reflash the rom but I can't work out how I'd go about this and I'm not sure it's worth any more of my time to recover old smss!

Another thought was using the virtual android emulator to trigger an sms backup and restore - but again I couldn't work out how to go about this.

Thanks once again, but unless anyone has any final ideas I'm giving up!

Edited May 17, 2012 by clearvision

[Guest brantewing]

No matter what kind of files you lost, and if you want to recover, just find some software like Data Recovery to help you.

Edited October 27, 2013 by brantewing

[Guest Varmos]

No matter what kind of files you lost, and if you want to recover, just find some software like Data Recovery to help you.

 

Are you sure it works on a broken screen device?

[Guest jensi10]

If you are an Android device user, you can recover lost contacts from broken Android. I would like to show the professional guide to you:

Step 1. Run the Program and Enable USB debugging

Step 2. Analyze and Scan Lost Contacts

Step 3. Preview and Restore Lost Contacts on Broken Android Phone

Good luck!

[Guest freyawright]

If the computer recognizes your phone but won't let you see any files then that would seem that USB debugging is not enabled. Here's an older thread where someone had the same issue with an Android phone. You may want to look at some of the suggestions of how to transfer files from Android with broken screen.

 

You may also want to try options using adb as you'll be able to use the windows command prompt to accomplish functions on the device. But again, I'm not sure how that would work (or not) without debugging mode enabled. Here's a guide to recover contacts from broken Android, it may give some tips to you.

Edited May 30, 2014 by freyawright