On Monday, I went to the doctor's office for an eye exam. While there, I decided to text my wife. Unfortunately, the screen of my trusty Motorola Moto Z Play was black. Nothing I could do would make it come up. I could feel it vibrating when I used the fingerprint reader to unlock it, so it was on, but the screen wasn't displaying at all. After trying a reboot and a hard reset (neither of which worked), I just decided to get another phone.
The problem is that I still have data on the old phone. I can't access it because when I plug a cable into my phone and laptop, my phone goes into "charging" mode instead of "transfer files" mode. It's requiring me to change the settings, but I can't do this because of the non-working screen.
Is there any way of recovering data from a broken screen phone or am I out of luck?
It's completely black. I've tried rebooting it, but it doesn't seem to respond. I can recharge it and I know the battery is still working because it's still responding to my touching the fingerprint sensor. (Amazing the battery life our phones have without those screens draining the charge!)
#3. "RE: Android Phone With Blank Screen" In response to jasonlevine (Reply # 2) Mon Feb-25-19 10:42 PM by GreyFalcon
That's unfortunate. Have you tried hooking it to your computer to see if you can access the file folders (oops see you can't do that) or checked with a phone store for file transfer and is there a possibility your phone company has cloud backup and storage. Google also backs up a lot of contacts. My ESET also backs up contacts.
I tried that. Unfortunately, the phone defaults to "recharge via USB" mode instead of "transfer files" mode. I have the photos stored in Google Photos, so I don't think I've lost much, but Google Photos stores lower resolution photos and I was hoping to recover the higher resolution ones on the phone itself.
I decided to charge the phone (which had died) and try AirDroid. I had set this up previously on my phone as part of a demonstration on video calling. (I needed to display my phone screen on a computer monitor.) Unfortunately, this didn't work because apparently AirDroid didn't start up by default on my phone.
Then I shook my phone and the camera activated. (One of the nice features of the Moto phones.) I couldn't see anything, but I felt the tell-tale vibration that meant "launched the camera app." I tried taking some photo using the volume keys and taking screenshots. Lo and behold, those appeared on my new phone in Google Photos.
So the phone is still working - well, except for the screen.
My next attempt will involve my son's Nintendo Switch base. The Switch uses a USB-C connector just like my phone. It connects from the Switch to an HDMI port. If I can get this to work right, I might be able to see on my TV what I should be seeing on my phone. Then, a Bluetooth keyboard might help me interact with the phone itself.