Desperately need data from phone

[Conrad99]

Greetings: My third V20 has died. The first one self-ignited, and the second one dropped dead without provocation. Neither time was I able to retrieve any data, contacts, memos, photos etc even though I used an SD card and had it designated as the storage device.

Now my third V20 has died but not quite as completely as the first two: only the touch screen has stopped working. I made the mistake of trying to clean the phone with a moistened paper towel. Some moisture apparently infiltrated through the back cover by the power switch opening.

Anyway this time I have some really critical info on the phone which I need to retrieve. Again, though I specifically designated the SD card for storage, virtually nothing is on the card. That's neither here nor there at this point.

I need to know how I can use the USB cable for data transfer without using the touch screen to specify, well, anything. As I'm sure you know the default USB function is charging. Please help with any advice you might have. I can't send the phone to anyone for data recovery because of the sensitive nature of the data. Thanks.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! See if this technique works: A quick guide to accessing a locked phone with a cracked screen - Android Forums at AndroidCentral.com

As you can tell from the first couple of times it happened, it's imperative to make sure important data is backed up or synced some place safe on a regular basis for just this kind of mishap. In the future, take advantage of Google Photos auto-backup, as well as saving your files to Google Drive (or your cloud storage of choice).

 

[Conrad99]

Welcome to Android Central! See if this technique works: A quick guide to accessing a locked phone with a cracked screen - Android Forums at AndroidCentral.com

As you can tell from the first couple of times it happened, it's imperative to make sure important data is backed up or synced some place safe on a regular basis for just this kind of mishap. In the future, take advantage of Google Photos auto-backup, as well as saving your files to Google Drive (or your cloud storage of choice).

Thanks, I read that entire thread; unfortunately the screen is now blank so I don't think a mouse will help. It's frustrating though knowing that the data is still on the phone but there's no way of getting to it.

My biggest mistake is thinking that designating the SD card as storage default would make much difference. Weird that a few photos did make it there, but nothing of importance. I can't use 'cloud' storage for reasons too tedious to mention.