Recovering data from water damaged phone.

[Darren Garrison]

I have a Galaxy J7 Crown that had I was using only for photos since it has a better camera than my "phone" phone. It got wet. The system was giving overheating warnings. I turned the phone off, blew out as much water as I could, left it on a warm surface for a couple of days hoping it would dry out. Then I plug it into my PC and boot the phone. Phone starts up, PC recognizes it, I start transferring files to PC. But after a few seconds the USB connection is lost, I notice that the touchscreen isn't working well, so I turn it off again.

The next time I go to boot the phone, it won't start. I plug it into either the charger or PC USB port and I get an overheat warning: in the top half of the screen, a triangle with an exclamation mark in it; in the bottom half a USB plug with a "Ghostbusters" crossed-circle around it. It will not boot.

It has been sitting for a couple of months now, still shows the warning screen, still won't boot. But it is still functional enough to at least do that instead of being a total brick.

So, what are my prospects of having the phone repaired at least enough to backup my files? And what sort of cost should I expect. The phone itself has little monetary value, but I hate losing a few months worth of photos and videos on it.

 

[Darren Garrison]

Okay, I was actually able to retrieve my data between the post and it being approved. I decided to see what would happen if I accessed the factory reset menu (which I had to Google to find the steps--never used it on this phone before.) Here is the process I ended up with.

Hit factory reset keys (power-up-home at once, release power, release up-home) with USB disconnected. Plug in USB. Reset menu comes up, choose reboot from the menu. When the splash screen comes up, disconnect USB. The phone boots normally. Start moving files to Micro SD. After 2-3 minutes, phone warns me it is overheating (it isn't) and shuts down. I repeated the whole process around a dozen times to get all my files backed up.

So the main concern of data recovery is solved, but I'm still curious about repair prospects--there doesn't seem to be an actual overheating issue, just a sensor malfunction.