"ancient" mobile now dead - transferring contacts/ photos etc ?

deejaybee

Hi all,

My trusty Samsung J5/6 which i purchased in 2016 has finally rolled a 7... i think its a screen issue, as the battery is fine ( tried it in wife's identical phone )  and i have heard a couple of texts coming in, and charger makes the "bleep" sound when connected. but screen remains black - has had a few cracks on it since about a year ago which might have something to do with it.

So, i have ordered a Samsung A25.( sim free ) which was a reasonable price @ Argos....

If i stick the sim from old one in it will it keep all the contacts / photos / messsages etc ?

I tried putting the sim into wife's phone,  but her phone is locked as she bought it on a contract, so my stuff wasnt visible..

Thanks

DullGreyGuy

Depends, in old phones contacts etc could be stored in the phone or the sim but as time went on it became more prevalent that they were stored on the phone. 

The J5 is only 9 years old so well past when the sim was the storage device. It's an Android device though so surely its all stored in Google's systems and will be restored not by inserting the sim but logging into your Google account. 

deejaybee

Thank you for the feedback,  will have to find my google account details..

savergrant

If the phone appears live apart from the screen you could try to plug it into a computer. However you may have a problem giving the computer access to the phone, ie entering your pin or passcode and clicking 'allow'. Worth a try though.

PHK

Just to support @DullGreyGuy ‘s post. SIM cards haven’t stored anything for a very long time, and when they did it was a few contacts and text messages. 

But unless you turned it off then your contacts, messages and photos etc will be stored in your Google account. 

If you did turn it off then you’ll need to try to recover them from the phone. You could try plugging it in to a PC. The J5 is at the point where phones started asking for permission to access the contents and I don’t know which side of the divide it’s on, so it may work. 

(Edit: I’ve just checked. It will be depend on if you updated the handset. It came with a version of Android  with optional encryption but was upgraded to versions with encryption by default) 

If it does need permission then the storage is encrypted so the only other option would be to have it repaired, hope that doesn’t wipe it and make a backup. 

But hopefully, it’s backed up to your Google or Samsung accounts. 

deejaybee

Thanks so much for the feedback & info everyone, appreciated.!

I have transferred sim to the new A25 - i have most of my previous contacts, so must have saved them to the sim previously.

Installed whatsapp and logged in using Google account, but i am missing all my photos.....

The thing is, the Google account details i had written down, MAY have been from another phone that i used for work only ( didnt have WhatsApp installed on work phone )

A workmate is good friends with a bloke who works at a local O2 shop ( i am on O2 contract ) so thats an avenue i can explore,

Have connected the J5 to my laptop but nothing seems to be happening ?

deejaybee

Forgot to mention, in the set up of new phone it gives me the option of connecting old and new phone by cable to enable transfer .

I did this but nothing happened ( possibly could be that i needed to respond to something on old phone, but obviously unable to as screen gone )

PHK

For photos you need to look in the Google Photos app. 

When you setup the phone, almost the first thing it asks is to log into your Google account. You should log in at that point using the Google account that you used with the old phone. 

 

jbrassy

PHK said:

For photos you need to look in the Google Photos app. 

When you setup the phone, almost the first thing it asks is to log into your Google account. You should log in at that point using the Google account that you used with the old phone. 

 

This depends on whether the OP had the Google Photos app installed on his old phone. If he didn't, then they're probably not backed up. 

Alternatively, if the old phone had an SD card, they may be saved to that.

If Google Photos was not installed and there is no SD card, the OP will probably need to get the phone repaired. 

Either way, I think it's a lesson on why it's important to back your phone up to the cloud.

PHK

I agree, if anything is important then you back it up. 

(Incidentally, Samsung phones at that time had Google Photos installed and you had to opt out of backing up. As long as you'd not skipped signing into the phone!)