Recovering data from phone with broken touchscreen

[skrybe]

My HT Desire HD touchscreen died (at least partly) last week. I can no longer use anything in a column about a centimetre wide that runs the whole right side of the screen - which includes the Enter button. So I can't actually login to the phone

I've bought a new phone (Sony Xperia Z) and got my sim copied and switched the SD card from the Desire to the Sony. However, there is still stuff on the phone. I've realised that at least some of my data was on the onboard memory and I'd like to get it back. So basically I'm looking for ways to get the data back.

I can't plug the phone in and pull data off because I need to be able to login to switch it from charge only to USB drive. Maybe there's a way to force this?

I read an interesting post on hooking a USB keyboard to android and it should "just work" (How To Connect a USB Keyboard To Your Android Phone). However, I don't have the adapter to connect it, and the Desire ran an older version of android with Sense on top, so it may "just not work". I'm going to try to track down the USB adapter and give it a whirl but I'm looking for other suggestions that may help.

 

[Shadowriver]

what do you mean "charge only", Android usally have other services on that can use USB You might have MTP or if you left debug on you might try to access ADB

 

[skrybe]

Well I don't know about other handsets but on the HTC when you plug it into a PC you get a popup on the phone that has several options. The default being "Charge only" meaning that the handset gets charged but you can't read/write to the phone from the PC. Nor does HTC sync work if it's on charge only. Because you need to login to the phone to get to that popup I'm stuck with charge only.

Not sure what you mean by MTP, but I'll look into ADB. I know it was in debug mode because I needed to install a beta outside of the app store.

Thanks

 

[skrybe]

Ok, ADB won't work. I can't get it to detect my phone (adb devices). Windows knows the phone is attached as I see a drive letter for it (the drive is inaccessible though) and device manager lists it under disk drives as a HTC Android Phone USB Device. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling all the HTC software - Sync, driver manager and usb driver (original and latest version). Incidentally HTC Sync wouldn't detect the phone regardless of version. It had worked in the past but I suspect it only works when you choose HTC sync from the phone popup when you plug the phone into the PC.

Tried running PDANet and it never detects a device either. Following their instructions there is never a prompt to install a driver when the phone is plugged in, it just happens automatically. I tried installing PDANet both with and without the HTC sync software installed.

The driver that installs automatically appears to be a Microsoft default driver. It's dated 2006 and signed by MS. The file version indicates its part of the Win7 RTM, so original Win7 driver by the looks. I tried uninstalling that and running the PDANet but it looks like the MS driver trumps the one they're trying to install. As every time I plug the phone in it just uses the MS driver. Its not possible to remove the driver by renaming/deleting the file as its the same driver used on the HDDs and SSDs in my PC.

I just did a test (with no HTC software or PDANet installed) plugging in my Sony phone and without USB debugging enabled I can access the phone's memory and SD card from Windows even if the handset is locked. ADB devices lists nothing at this point. Turned on USB debugging on the Sony and Windows immediately detected new hardware and automatically installed new drivers for the phone. Running ADB devices lists the phone perfectly. Again, even though the handset is locked.

So... I'm assuming the problem is that HTC phones are secured a bit more than default. I am sure USB debugging was turned on on my HTC so thats all I can think of.

 

[Rukbat]

skrybe, have you tried turning the phone to landscape to get to the Enter key?