Accessing data with touchscreen unresponsive... or unwarranted repair?

[Alisha161]

Hello there,

I have a bad dilemma in front of me currently; that's either sending my phone for repair and lose all my data (hell no!), or send it to some third-party but lose warranty. Ugh.

Few days back I've had an accident where my stupid suitcase tripped me over with phone in hand. Smashed my screen badly, but music I listened to still kept playing xD And more importantly, the display is still working, and so are the side keys - camera can still be activated.

I reached out for support in the official Sony Chat, but we sort of ran out of options. I mean fella #1 suggested USB OTG cable, which I've ordered, but no cursor showed up when I connected it today. And then fella #2 tells me on Android 5 it will only work if you enable it in Options... And of course how the hell to do this when the touchscreen is unusable and whole thing is locked -_- Bloody vicious circle.

Now as a last resort, I am reaching out to you guys, but won't be at all surprised if I indeed have to send it for repair to someone non-Sony. Is there really no secret tricks with side keys or something? I am prepared to do lots of fancy stuff just to get to my data.

The reason why I badly don't want my data to be wiped is because it's months' worth of work of photos, with many important ones out there. A large portion of those were on my SD card, which I've already secured - but because of the amount of stuff I've racked up, many were no longer fitting on the external memory card and so had to be on the internal storage. Letting them go is simply NOT an option.

 

[SpookDroid]

Hi there,

Unfortunately options for an unresponsive phone are limited. But let's see if some will work.

First, the OTG cable they suggested is the best way to go, BUT you'll need a mouse to go with that. Make sure it's a standard USB mouse that won't require any drivers or extra power or it won't work.

Second, when you connect your phone to a computer, can you see the files? My guess is 'no' unless the phone has been unlocked, but if you weren't using a lockscreen, then that's one way to do it. If your phone is locked, you can try unlocking it remotely from the Android Device Manager (from the Play Store, go to the gear icon, you should see it there; for this to work Android Device Manager should not have been disabled as a device administrator on your phone).

Other than that, not a lot you can do I'm afraid. But for future reference, I strongly suggest backing up your pictures to a cloud service. Saves a lot of headaches after accidents like these