Question Getting Photos Out of Old Android Phones

[sarahsda]

Good day. Serious question here, hope some of you geniuses can help.

Long story, cut short: In August of this year our son passed away. Among other things, we got possession of his three Android phones plus one LG Android mini-tablet:
• Samsung Galaxy S7, Android v7.0
• Samsung Galaxy S7, Android v8.0
• Motorola Droid, Android v4.4.4
• LG G-pad, Android v5.0.1

None of these phones were locked, we can get into them with a swipe. So that's a big help. But the phones were on an AT&T family plan which his ex-wife paid for. So when he passed away she cancelled the family plan, so the cellular service no longer works. As a result, any attempt to use services (such as activating the Google email) which require a confirmation code sent to the phone number, don't work. NB: We are able to log the phone in to our home wifi network, and things like the browser do work. But email doesn't, probably because we don't have the current account passwords.

The phones contain a lot of photos of his family, including our granddaughter, which we want to ensure get preserved. But getting the pictures out of the phones has been a nightmare. We have been able to download pictures from one phone by connecting it to a Windows computer (Win 11, up to date) and using File Explorer. But other phones don't get recognized by File Explorer. The LG tablet gets recognized, but only transfers some of the photos, no error message or explanation given.

Our biggest concern is doing something which will permanently lock us out of the phone, or delete the contents before we can save them. We want to prevent that at all costs.

So, questions:
• Is there a software tool which will allow us to download the photos to our computer, other than using File Explorer?
• Could I create a new user account on the phone, log in as the new user, and still see the photos?
• Is there any chance that AT&T can reactivate this cellular number so we can get confirmation codes? Been out-of-service since early September.
• What are the questions that I should be asking, and I'm not smart enough to ask them?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or suggestions.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! Our condolences for your loss.

Since none of those devices had a screen lock set up, you're in no danger of locking yourself out (unless you create your own screen lock and then forget it).

When you connect a device to the computer, swipe down the notification panel on the device and look for a USB notification icon. Tap it, then select the option for File Transfer (it might also be called MTP). Then, on Windows Explorer, you may need to look at various different folders. The /DCIM/Camera folder is the first place to check, because this is where photos taken by the Camera app are saved. But other folders to look at would be any other subdirectory of /DCIM as well as /Pictures.

Creating a new profile on a device would not let you see photos saved on a different profile. That data is partitioned separately.

Just to be clear -- are you seeing all of these photos on the devices using their Gallery apps? Or are you looking at the Google Photos app? If it's Google Photos, it's possible that a lof of those photos are saved to your son's Google Photos cloud library, and aren't physically on the phone. To access them on another device, you'd have to log in using his Google account -- do you know this Google account username and password? If not, you can submit a request to Google this way: https://support.google.com/accounts/troubleshooter/6357590?hl=en