What Can Be Recovered From A Dead Tablet?

[BrickyBrian]

I do not use a tablet but my wife does and all I know is that it’s a two year old Samsung which appeared to die today. If I take it to a computer repair place will they be able to recover her photographs and contact details posting them to a replacement machine? Better than that are such devices possible of resurrection?

Obviously not up to it.

 

[Traveller]

As you likely found out, most places that service computers cannot service Android devices. With a computer, you have a hard drive or SSD that can be removed at worst and placed into a housing or another computer and the data from it read. With Android tablets the equivalent to the hard drive is soldered onto the board. Worse, when a tablet is completely dead, it won't even turn on. This is why you want to offload all your important data to a MicroSD card or into cloud storage; once the tablet dies, it dies completely.

 

[BrickyBrian]

Thank you very much for such a succinct reply. I had not discovered that Android devices cannot be serviced yet because I had not taken it to an engineer. Personally, I have a Desktop Computer a Laptop and a Smart Phone and have a certain amount of knowledge regarding all three although it’s not extensive. Having said that I have a backup recording device on line for the desktop and once a month. I use a different recorder unplugged from the computer which I plug in once a month to make total backup just in case I meet a scam manages to clean the system up including the backup.

I keep nothing of importance on my Android Smart Phone and only keep a collection of the telephone numbers on it separately. The main use my wife makes for her Tablet it that nonsensical Facebook and a mass of photographs of the children and grandchildren so she is very upset but I have been attempting to persuade her to learn how to clean her Tablet up and backup the photographs ever since she was given it. If she gets a replacement Tablet maybe this time she will take some lessons on how to back it up. Many thanks for your information.

 

[Traveller]

Teach her how to use Google Photos, as it can back up pictures it finds on both internal storage and MicroSD. At worst, she'd get a notification to perform the backup, and at best the app would perform the backup automatically.

As for the tablet itself, what exactly does it do when you connect it to the charger? Also, have you attempted to use your smartphone's charger to attempt to revive the tablet? Reason I'm asking is that your tablet is only a couple of years old and Samsung makes the best Android tablets available. The tablet may simply need to sit plugged in for a period of time to start charging, or there could be an issue with the charger or the USB cable.

 

[BrickyBrian]

Right, I’m back and the first question I would like to take up is: I noted that you said, “With Android tablets the equivalent to the hard drive is soldered onto the board.” In that case could a competent person connect up to that and download everything to a USB?

I asked my wife to offer an account of what happened to the Tablet and she said the following:

My wife was looking at Face Book and attempted to move to a different item but the screen went blue.

The Tablet then kept going back to the normal opening of the Galaxy when trying to open Face Book. My wife then noticed that the underside of the device was quite hot and it then died.

My wife then took the device to one of our bright grandsons whom by pressing various buttons on the side of the device persuaded the device to start.

When my wife got home she started charging the device getting it up to 84%. Opened Face Book and the device then stopped again.

So, many thanks but where does she go from here?

 

[Traveller]

• The first thing she does is go to the grandson and have him reboot the tablet.
• The second thing she does, before doing ANYTHING ELSE, is ask said grandson to pull all her pictures and other relevant data off the internal storage and place them on a MicroSD card. Don't have one? Drive to WalMart and get one: they're not expensive.
• Third thing the grandson does is factory reset the tablet and set it up for grandma.
• Fourth thing is to delete the Facebook app, as it is a major resource hog. Simply use the web browser on the tablet.

 

[BrickyBrian]

• The first thing she does is go to the grandson and have him reboot the tablet.

· Major problem is that the Tablet is back home and I need to find a competent Tablet engineer which I will start to look for in the morning.

• The second thing she does, before doing ANYTHING ELSE, is ask said grandson to pull all her pictures and other relevant data off the internal storage and place them on a MicroSD card. Don't have one? Drive to WalMart and get one: they're not expensive.
• When I find a competent Tablet engineer I will ask them to pull the photographs and place them on a USB because I have no idea how to use a MicroSD card. I will also ask them to factory reset the tablet and set it up.
• Fourth thing is to delete the Facebook app, as it is a major resource hog. Simply use the web browser on the tablet.
• I have a mega problem with following this suggestion as the woman is wilful although I will try to sell her the idea of the browser when I can understand the process.
• Many thanks again.

 

[Traveller]

Most tablets have a slot that can accept a MicroSD card which can be used to store photos and other material. For example, my Lenovo has a 64GB MicroSD installed. My roommate's identical Lenovo has a 256GB MicroSD installed (and recognized, incredibly). If yours does not, the person who will work on your tablet has alternative means of getting the data off, which you pointed out.

The issue you describe has occurred on some Galaxy S4 smartphones. In those cases, the issue was a bad GPU. I don't think you have that issue since the tablet did work until she tried using the Facebook app, but to be certain the person working on your tablet should try to access Facebook using the browser. I believe the Facebook app is consuming too many system resources, like it normally does. But you should know within short order one way or another.