Getting contacts from a phone with broken screen

[xyz123]

Hi, my uncle dropped his old LG android phone and screen has shattered. Phone charges but unseable due to screen. Then he found out that he hadn't synced or backed up contacts.

Is there a way to get contacts from the phone. Not worried about anything else on the phone.

Thanks

[CanAm]

Does he remember where the contacts are saved? ie, SIM, SD card or internal memory.
If the first two, just plug them in the new phone. If internal memory, connect phone to PC and interrogate it. I always save to the SIM (and sync!) so don't know if this last one will work.

Then show him how to backup stuff!

[Road2Ruin]

I thought Google backed up your contacts by default. Try to log in to his Google account on a pc or your phone to see.

[Easternlight]

If you get a OTG (on the go) USB adaptor, USB to whatever connection the phone has, micro usb, type c, etc.
You can then plug in a corded mouse and a curser will appear and you can operate the phone and export the contacts to the sd card if it has one as an .xcf(?) file or email or bluetooth to another device or to google account.

[paralla]

Plug it into a pc via usb and you should be able to find the contacts in a file browser window on the PC

[paulrockliffe]

Road2Ruin said:

I thought Google backed up your contacts by default. Try to log in to his Google account on a pc or your phone to see.

My contacts have been backed up to an Exchange server since 2005, it simply isn't possible to not have your contacts backed up in 2021 surely?

Yet every week someone on Facebook posts, " Send me your numbers, phone broke." WTF.

[xyz123]

Thanks for replies. Contacts are unfortunately not on the sim card or backed up on Google.

I tried to connect to the PC using LG's software. By default phone connects in charging mode rather than data transfer mode. Wirh broken screen I can't select the option of data transfer. A small section of the screen is working but unfortunately thats not good enough to either select the option or to export contacts.... So frustrating as if I can go just one more step forward, I can do it..

[xyz123]

Easternlight said:

If you get a OTG (on the go) USB adaptor, USB to whatever connection the phone has, micro usb, type c, etc.
You can then plug in a corded mouse and a curser will appear and you can operate the phone and export the contacts to the sd card if it has one as an .xcf(?) file or email or bluetooth to another device or to google account.

I will look into that. Silly question but is it any OTG adapter or are there any specific functionality I need to look for.. Thanks.

Edited by xyz123 on Saturday 10th April 20:23

[paralla]

If it’s USB C a USB C to HDMI cable will mirror the screen on a TV. That might let you set it up to sync or turn on file transfer mode.

[Muntu]

Erm, replace the screen?

[paulrockliffe]

The other issue you might have is that Android will default to charging only if the phone is locked, for obvious reasons. I'd expect that extends to any method of getting the data off a locked phone.

Maybe you just need to unlock it, which might be easy or hard depending on how it was locked and how ballsed the screen is. Pray for fingerprints!

[xyz123]

paulrockliffe said:

The other issue you might have is that Android will default to charging only if the phone is locked, for obvious reasons. I'd expect that extends to any method of getting the data off a locked phone.

Maybe you just need to unlock it, which might be easy or hard depending on how it was locked and how ballsed the screen is. Pray for fingerprints!

Thanks. as 75 year old he didn't bother with password which helps in this case.

[320d is all you need]

xyz123 said:

paulrockliffe said:

The other issue you might have is that Android will default to charging only if the phone is locked, for obvious reasons. I'd expect that extends to any method of getting the data off a locked phone.

Maybe you just need to unlock it, which might be easy or hard depending on how it was locked and how ballsed the screen is. Pray for fingerprints!

Thanks. as 75 year old he didn't bother with password which helps in this case.

I had this recently. The only real way was to try using HDMI output and mouse, but didn't work on my device. The best option was a Desktop emulator connected via USB but the phone needed the "USB Debugging option" enabled in Dev-Options.

Unfortunately I couldn't do this, luckily for me, Everything was backed up to Google, and I used my new phones data-transfer feature to copy photos etc.

[colin79666]

Tried asking the phone? “Hey Google, export my contacts” or something might work.

[paulrockliffe]

The only other suggestion I have is to go to XDA-Developers.com and ask there. Though if there' s way it's likely to involve a load of hassle.

I remember when I had a Nokia 20 years ago and you could just plug it into the computer and use Nokia's tool to send SMS messages from Outlook, you want something like that.

[ash056]

Muntu said:

Erm, replace the screen?

This.

Not that big a deal to replace the screen.

[xyz123]

Thanks for all the replies. To conclude i managed to export the contacts using OTG adapter and a mouse. I hit a problem where i couldnt get the contacts file out of phone. The device is so old, android version is unsupported so none of the google services like sync/gmail worked. Even going to gmail.com on web didnt work and neither did yahoo.com. Kept giving me "connection not private" warnings and wont let me skip past it. Really strange as i know the internet was connected and connection was secure.

In the end i had a very old email address with an overseas provider and that somehow worked and i was able to email contacts file to myself.

I have imported contacts in his new android phone and also set-up sync with google to avoid future problems.

Thanks for everyone who replied and specially to EASTERNLIGHT who gave the suggestion of OTG cable.