Help - How to get photos from locked iPhone 4 with ruined digitizer... (itunes, AT&T)

[GoCUBS1]

Any iphone tech experts here?

iPhone fell in the water and daughter plugged it in and turned it on...

Brought the phone to repair shop who cleaned up water damage, and tried replacing screen/digitizer.

Digitizer still does not work and phone is locked on the passcode screen. Calls, text msgs, wi-fi still working (pops up on lock screen), but no way to interface. Repair Tech (who was highly-recommended) said it may be the digitizer fuse on the motherboard and doesn't know anyone who will replace this.

There is 6+ months of great photos that were not backed up on Mac and only some of the photos are on iCloud (even though iCloud was supposedly turned on for photos, there's plenty of storage space, and everything else is there - contacts, calendar, etc.).

The phone is also on "family-sharing" but we cannot access the photos from another device. Upload to iTunes will not work without first entering passcode on phone. Apple and AT&T desk personnel do not know how to get to the photos (though have a Genius Bar appt. tomorrow).

Here are my ?'s -

- Should I try to restore fuse to motherboard? Who does this and for how much?

- Is there some other backdoor way to bypass passcode and get to these photos on the phone?

- What happens if I go to iTunes, and select the "Restore phone/iphone Recovery Mode" option? Will that delete all photos?

- What are the chances Apple store can get these photos off the phone and onto a new device?

Thanks for any help!

[Peregrine]

Here are my ?'s -

- Should I try to restore fuse to motherboard? Who does this and for how much?
No one does this.

- Is there some other backdoor way to bypass passcode and get to these photos on the phone?
No, as it should be.

- What happens if I go to iTunes, and select the "Restore phone/iphone Recovery Mode" option? Will that delete all photos?
Your phone will revert to how it was new. Yes, it will delete photos.

- What are the chances Apple store can get these photos off the phone and onto a new device?
I'd guess 70/30 against/for. They may have a way.

You have an appointment with the people who know that phone better then anyone here could possibly. Don't do a thing until you talk to them.

[GoCUBS1]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

Here are my ?'s -

- Should I try to restore fuse to motherboard? Who does this and for how much?
No one does this.

- Is there some other backdoor way to bypass passcode and get to these photos on the phone?
No, as it should be.

- What happens if I go to iTunes, and select the "Restore phone/iphone Recovery Mode" option? Will that delete all photos?
Your phone will revert to how it was new. Yes, it will delete photos.

- What are the chances Apple store can get these photos off the phone and onto a new device?
I'd guess 70/30 against/for. They may have a way.

You have an appointment with the people who know that phone better then anyone here could possibly. Don't do a thing until you talk to them.

Thanks... I wasn't going to do anything... just thought I'd ask around about options. I did talk to Apple yesterday and they could not help, but am meeting with more specialized tech next. Also called 2 cell phone repair shops in Chicago who indicated there may be someone, somewhere, who will do the micro welding to repair the fuse (at great cost I'm sure). The one shop said they planned on receiving training next year in NY on how to do this. So am assuming someone in NY does it.

The replacement phone has already been received from the insurance company, but I don't want to destroy the old phone without exhausting all options on retrieving the photos. I'm supposed to send in the damaged phone within 7 days.

The reason I asked about the "Restore/Recovery mode" is that the screen indicates you will be prompted to restore some existing data - so was wondering if it had an option to recover photos... I am not going to press the button to find out.

I will cross my fingers Apple has some other options.

Will also add that the missing photos are appearing as placeholders (by date) on the iCloud Photos screen but when I try to open them, I receive "Cannot Load Photo" message and then another message to please report the error to Apple so they can fix the issue. So I think the photos did go to iClould, but I can not access them.

[stanley-88888888]

is ifone able to remotely install stuff from the store ?

i use an ssh server (from the play store) that allows me to browse files from my laptop (most other smart cellular telefone brands are easily hackable -- which sometimes is a bad thing).