Mrs 3 year old real me phone died, comes on but the screen does not light up so nothing can be seen. She bought another one today Android 12. She's frantic to get info about work off the old phone onto the new one, can this be done if taken to a repair shop? It boots up, but that's it, phone does not work for calls. Told her to back up before, even just writing numbers down to no avail.

If the display can be replaced, then it's easy to fix. In case some internal stuff like mainboard is broken, it's nearly impossible to fix it.

 

I have an old Android phone from 5 years with the same issue. Display can't be fixed, and I have so many pictures on it, but it's impossible to 'hack' into it. I still keep the phone because I hope one day it can be fixed.

You should be able to "clone" a new Android phone from your Google account. It should then precede to download all apps from your account along with passwords and login details onto the new phone. It may take awhile so be patient.

As Dmaxdan posted, that should be an option. After that, there are numerous forensic tools available online to get information out of broken phones.

i back up every month to avoid that drama, maybe she'll learn for next time?

Just connecting it to the PC via USB may start FileTransfer on the phone so that she can see her file system on the PC and then transfer the data to the PC:

 

 

 

If you have a simlar of identical phone, you can also connect a mouse and keyboard via USB hub to the phone. Then try it on the working phone first and write down the steps you need to take to get USB FileTransfer working - but usually it works out of the box - and then repeat the steps blindly on the broken phone, so that the phone shows up in the Windows file explorer.

 

Also ask her to sign-in to her google account on her PC, maybe all her contact info and photos have been automatically synched before. Check the google contacts and check what is on her google drive.

 

Also maybe MyPhoneExplorer can help her:

https://www.fjsoft.at/en/Versions/

 

Install the software on your PC and connect your phone to the computer by usb.

 

If she is lucky (depending on ADB debug settings) one can connect and sync/transfer the data from the phone. One can also remote control the phone like this. Also there is a file explorer in this software.

2 hours ago, Barley said:

Just connecting it to the PC via USB may start FileTransfer on the phone so that she can see her file system on the PC and then transfer the data to the PC:

 

 

 

If you have a simlar of identical phone, you can also connect a mouse and keyboard via USB hub to the phone. Then try it on the working phone first and write down the steps you need to take to get USB FileTransfer working - but usually it works out of the box - and then repeat the steps blindly on the broken phone, so that the phone shows up in the Windows file explorer.

 

Also ask her to sign-in to her google account on her PC, maybe all her contact info and photos have been automatically synched before. Check the google contacts and check what is on her google drive.

 

Also maybe MyPhoneExplorer can help her:

https://www.fjsoft.at/en/Versions/

 

Install the software on your PC and connect your phone to the computer by usb.

 

If she is lucky (depending on ADB debug settings) one can connect and sync/transfer the data from the phone. One can also remote control the phone like this. Also there is a file explorer in this software.

Thanks for that will try it