Phone won’t turn on? Your photos may still be there

A phone that will not start has not necessarily lost its data: a no-power fault does not prove the storage has failed. Recovery is never guaranteed. Both customers below agreed to have their jobs written up.

Why a dead phone can still have your data

Phone storage is non-volatile, so a loss of power alone does not erase it. Power circuits, charging components or other board parts can prevent a phone from booting while the stored data remains. Storage and encryption can also be damaged, which is why recovery needs a proper assessment.

We answer two questions separately: can the phone be repaired for daily use, and can it run long enough to copy data? A temporary recovery may be possible even when we would not recommend the phone as a daily device.

Case file 1: a Galaxy S23 that two shops called dead

The customer was using his Samsung Galaxy S23 normally when it died on the spot. It never powered on again. He took it to two repair shops and both told him the same thing: the phone is dead, it is a board issue, and it is not something they can work on. He then phoned around and most of the other shops turned it down without seeing it.

When he called us we asked him to bring it in so we could actually look at it. On the bench the fault traced to the CPU on the logic board. We told him a lasting repair was not realistic. What was realistic was a recovery, so that is what we quoted.

• Diagnosed a CPU fault on the logic board, not a storage fault.
• Reballed the CPU, the NAND storage chip and the RAM.
• Brought the phone up on the bench and kept it stable long enough to copy everything off.
• Returned the phone working, with the data out and safe.

Case file 2: an iPhone 13 Pro Max on the recovery screen, 500 GB on board

This one started as an ordinary night. The customer left his iPhone 13 Pro Max charging overnight and found it in the morning stuck on the Apple logo. It was a 1 TB phone with roughly 500 GB of data on it, and very little of that was backed up.

He looked up the problem and tried to update the software himself. After two failed attempts, the phone showed the cable-and-computer recovery screen. He was worried about the unbacked-up data and drove to Courtice from Pickering for an assessment.

A precision diagnosis of the logic board put the fault in the power lines, not the storage. That was the good news. The bad news was that it took two weeks of careful bench work to act on it.

• Traced the failure to the phone’s power line rather than the NAND.
• Repaired and replaced chips on the power line, reballing where it was needed.
• Worked the board over roughly two weeks, testing between each step.
• Powered the phone up long enough to pull about 500 GB of data off it.

Two weeks is not a normal turnaround, and board-level recovery takes as long as it takes. Rushing it is how you cook the one board that still holds somebody’s photos, so we take the time.

What these two jobs have in common

• Both phones were declared unfixable, or effectively so, before they reached our bench.
• In both cases the storage chip was never the problem. The board around it was.
• Both recoveries needed micro-soldering, not a parts swap, which is why other shops passed.
• In both cases the customer got the data, which was the thing they actually cared about.

Pause before restoring an iPhone stuck on the Apple logo

What to do before you bring a dead phone in

1. Stop charging it and stop trying to force it on. If a board fault is drawing current, more power can do more damage.
2. Write down what happened right before it died: dropped, wet, on charge overnight, updating, or nothing at all. That history narrows the diagnosis.
3. Note down whether anything is backed up, and roughly how much data is on the device.
4. Bring the phone in as it is. You do not need the box, the charger, or an appointment.

What we cannot recover

Two limits. If an iPhone is locked with a passcode or Face ID you do not have, we cannot bypass Apple’s encryption, and we do not unlock a device that is not yours. If a restore has erased the phone, we cannot recover the erased local data from it. A separate iCloud or computer backup may still hold a copy. We would rather explain that at the counter than take the job and disappoint you later.

Everything else starts with a free assessment. We tell you what we think is recoverable before any work begins, and if we try and recover nothing, you do not pay for the attempt. That is what “No data, no fee” means here.