Phone data recovery

BG1980 · 20 May 2019 at 20:10

Not sure anyone will be able to help but here goes.

I dropped my Sony Xperia phone and the screen is totally broken, can't see anything at all.

I tried to use the Xperia companion app to recover all my pictures etc off the phone. This is were the problem is, it asks me to unlock the phone and allow something in the settings, obviously I can't do this as the screen is broken.

Does anyone know of a way I can recover the data from the phone?

And yes I should have backed up the data to Google but lesson learned

Rroff · 20 May 2019 at 20:15

You can use HDMI MHL to see what is on the screen (hopefully without changing any settings) but the tricky bit is getting input as well as usually using the micro USB port for video out blocks its use for input devices like a mouse but in some cases you can do both or if you've used a bluetooth input device previously might be able to interface that way.

EDIT: Unless it is one of the newer Xperias with USB-C that makes it a lot harder.

BG1980 · 20 May 2019 at 20:49

Thanks for the reply, It does have a USB-C connection.

Rroff · 20 May 2019 at 21:01

Meh unfortunately a lot of phones don't do video out over USB-C which is ridiculous because all the support is there but disabled for silly political (for want of a better word) reasons.

BG1980 · 20 May 2019 at 22:19

Ah ok, thanks for the help. I'll make sure I back up next time.