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How to get photos from damaged iPhone 4?

Appreciate any help!


Background


iPhone 4 fell in the water and daughter plugged it in and turned it on... User uploaded file

Brought phone to repair tech and he cleaned up water damage, and tried replacing screen/digitizer.


Touch screen/digitizer still does not work (tried touching all areas) and the screen is locked on passcode screen. Display works (calls, text msgs, wi-fi working - shows pop ups on lock screen) and buttons work, but am unable to use phone.


Repair tech said it may be the digitizer fuse/connector to motherboard, but doesn't know anyone who fixes this.


Also brought phone to Genius Bar and they took apart phone and repositioned screen, but could not correct the problem.


I do not care about the phone, but there are 6+ months of important photos/vids that were not backed up successfully. I can not get around the locked screen to get the photos uploaded through iTunes (prompts to enter passcode on phone) or iCloud (thought it was selected to upload automatically - everything except the photos was backed up on iCloud).


On the iCloud Photos screen, some of the missing photos do appear as blank placeholders (with date and size). When I try to open them, I receive "Cannot Load Photo" message and then another message to please report error to Apple. The phone is on family-sharing, and I can access the last few weeks of photos from another device via Photo Stream.


Questions:


How do I get these photos off of phone?


- Does iCloud service have ability to remotely upload the photos?


- Should I look into restoring fuse/connection to motherboard to fix digitizer so I can get to photos?


- Look at a data recovery service?


- Any option to restore photos from a "Recovery Mode" process?


Any other ideas?

iPhone 4, iOS 7

Posted on Aug 21, 2015 11:08 PM

Reply
5 replies

Aug 21, 2015 11:29 PM in response to Natava

There is no way for you to retrieve any data/photos on that water damaged phone. Recovery mode restore would erase any remaining data. Unless you're dealing with an extremely expensive forensic data recovery outfit, virtually all advertised iPhone data recovery systems are scams. All the data on the phone is heavily encrypted. There is no "iCloud service."


Unless you excluded backing up photos in settings, the automatic backups included the photos within the backup. They aren't visible in iCloud, but will be restored to another iPhone if you restore that backup.


There are no user serviceable parts in iPhones and no support for DIY repairs are given here. If the Apple Store can't deal with it, SOL.

Aug 23, 2015 7:43 PM in response to modular747

No, unfortunately it is not jailbroken.


I received replacement iPhone 5 and was required to upgrade to iOS8 in order to perform Restore function on new phone. The old phone had iOS7. All my latest contacts, schedule, notes came over to my new phone, however my photos/vids were not restored. Instead, I received the photo backup from my daughter's phone (we use the same Apple ID), so I guess I didn't set up the Cloud backup correctly, or her photos overwrote mine.


Is there no service that fixes fuse/connector to digitizer so I can then enter passcode? What if I mail in phone to Apple for service?

How to get photos from damaged iPhone 4?

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