Recover Data from Dead iPhone

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Earbanean

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#319759 29-May-2025 15:40

I know this is a long shot. My son's iPhone Xr got submerged in the sea and is now dead. For some reason the photo upload to OneDrive hasn't been working, and there are a number of photos on the phone that my son would dearly love to recover. The high street phone repair shop said not possible. Is there any other hail Mary way to get any of the photos off it?

Edit: typo

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#3378111 29-May-2025 15:49

Anything is possible if you're willing to pay.

EG:

https://www.payam.co.nz/mobile-phone-data-recovery/

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Linux

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#3378113 29-May-2025 16:14

How big is your budget?

wellygary

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#3378114 29-May-2025 16:20

Linux:

How big is your budget?

Pretty much this,

For a private phone with "nice to have" photos it would be costly, but if its got the key to a $1million crypto wallet then they are probably options to pursue....

Earbanean

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#3378116 29-May-2025 16:35

Linux:

How big is your budget?

Yep, that seems to be the key question. Payam.co.nz, suggested above, appears to be $795. For pictures at the birth of my son, yep no problem. For pictures of my son and his mates at the school ball etc - hmm, not so sure.

Earbanean

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#3378123 29-May-2025 17:00

A Google on this comes up with 'Tenorshare UltData' software. They say it works running on a PC connected to the phone, even if the phone isn't powered on. I wouldn't have thought that's actually possible.

Bung

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#3378206 30-May-2025 06:27

Any chance that photos were backed up elsewhere in parallel to One Drive? Don't iPhones use Apple iCloud by default?

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cddt

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#3378217 30-May-2025 08:00

Bung:

Don't iPhones use Apple iCloud by default?

Yes, but that only includes 5 GB unless you pay.

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nztim

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#3378218 30-May-2025 08:14

I use OneDrive to back up my iPhone photos and am frustrated the app has to be open to function and doesn't just upload in the background

Guess it's the price you pay for not paying for M365 OneDrive storage as well as iCloud

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Earbanean

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#3378219 30-May-2025 08:19

cddt:

Bung:

Don't iPhones use Apple iCloud by default?

Yes, but that only includes 5 GB unless you pay.

Yeah, this is the issue. Free iCloud is good for backing up some settings and smaller data, but photos/videos maxes it pretty quickly. Given we already have a family OneDrive licence, that seemed like the obvious solution.

Earbanean

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#3378221 30-May-2025 08:21

nztim:

I use OneDrive to back up my iPhone photos and am frustrated the app has to be open to function and doesn't just upload in the background

Guess it's the price you pay for not paying for M365 OneDrive storage as well as iCloud

That's what I'm thinking now too. I'll have to have a rethink about the strategy. In this case, no critical data lost, but definitely significant enough to be really annoying.

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#3378228 30-May-2025 09:13

Earbanean:

That's what I'm thinking now too. I'll have to have a rethink about the strategy. In this case, no critical data lost, but definitely significant enough to be really annoying.

I open the OneDrive app before bed, that way I (at most) only lose a days worth of photos but it is still annoying AF

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#3378244 30-May-2025 10:06

It does not solve the OP's problem, but potentially having iCloud photos sync to a computer. That computer could then have some automation to move photos from the iCloud folder to the OneDrive folder. This helps in the situation where someone has an M365 subscription but only the default 5Gb iCloud storage but does rely on multiple devices syncing correctly.

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cddt

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#3378246 30-May-2025 10:20

Dynamic:

It does not solve the OP's problem, but potentially having iCloud photos sync to a computer. That computer could then have some automation to move photos from the iCloud folder to the OneDrive folder. This helps in the situation where someone has an M365 subscription but only the default 5Gb iCloud storage but does rely on multiple devices syncing correctly.

Good idea, but having iCloud photos sync to a non-Mac computer seems nigh on impossible.

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Earbanean

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#3378248 30-May-2025 10:28

Has anyone used a third party app like PhotoSync to sync photos to a PC (which in turn would sync with OneDrive)?

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#3379303 30-May-2025 20:35

Earbanean:

Has anyone used a third party app like PhotoSync to sync photos to a PC (which in turn would sync with OneDrive)?

I use Immich. It’s a faf to setup but really excellent to use. It’s basically self hosted Google photos. I’m running it on a Unraid (Linux) server rather than a PC but if you can run docker it should work.

I don’t sync it to OneDrive as I am slowly exiting most of my cloud services but do backup to backblaze.

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