Recover Photos from a Water Damaged iPhone 5S? In Recovery Mode?

[gregaz]

Friends,

Hope you have a silver bullet for me. Brief history:

- iPhone 5S 32GB
- iOS 7.1.2
- Submerged in water for about 2 minutes (had to swim ashore)
- ALL my vacation photos are on the phone. This is ALL I care about - the rest was backed up the day before vacation.
- Stuck it in a bag of rice within 30 minutes of water exposure.
- Tried booting after two days, the Apple logo comes up and dead after three seconds. Subsequent efforts yield nothing.
- Phone goes back into rice and outside in Arizona where it stays for a few more days. It is REALLY dry at this point.
- Attempt 2 - when I plug it into the computer (Mac), the Apple logo comes up, then it dies seconds later and then the Apple logo comes up. This goes on and on.
- I CAN get it into the Recovery Mode (hold the Home button before plugging the Lighting cable in). However, Image Capture does not see the phone in Recovery Mode.

SO, is there something I can do to try and scan the phone and backup the photos in Recovery Mode? Something else?

You would make my year if you have a solution for me.

THANK YOU IN ADVANCE!!!!!!

 

[iolinux333]

We're the photos being backed up to iCloud?

 

[Ambush083]

Did you have Photo Stream enabled? If you had another device I'm sure you'd be aware if the photos were on them or not. However, you may have copies in places you've forgotten about such as iPhoto.

It's worth a shot.

 

[gregaz]

We're the photos being backed up to iCloud?

Yes, but I was on a boat, and never near WiFi. So, no iCloud backup. :-(
The only location for the photos is the iPhone itself.

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Did you have Photo Stream enabled? If you had another device I'm sure you'd be aware if the photos were on them or not. However, you may have copies in places you've forgotten about such as iPhoto.

It's worth a shot.

Thanks for the reply - no dice. Was never near WiFi, so no Photo Stream, no iCloud, nothing. Everything is on the phone itself.

From the reading I have done - my only hope is some program that allows me to mount the phone and retrieve the data. Somehow ...

 

[hamiltonDSi]

but I was on a boat, and never near WiFi. So, no iCloud backup

The advantages of jailbreaking and a huge / unlimited data plan :

With 3G Unrestrictor you could sync the photos on PhotoStream (or even make a full iCloud backup) via LTE/4G/3G.

I know this doesn't help you but it may come in handy to someone.

 

[Ambush083]

You can try iExplorer. I use it to pull stuff off my phone. It mounts it like a HDD. I would just use the free version for now.

 

[gregaz]

You can try iExplorer. I use it to pull stuff off my phone. It mounts it like a HDD. I would just use the free version for now.

Thanks ... but it appears that the phone has to connect through iTunes for iMessage to work (here). Mine won't ... I tried it anyhow, and no luck.

What I need is some software that will allow me to browse the phone while it's in Recovery Mode. Is there such a thing?

BTW, iTunes recognized the phone as attached in Recovery Mode, but it wants to restore it, which as I understand will wipe everything out.

 

[PNutts]

Ouch. I did a Google search for recovering photos from a phone in DFU mode and came up with this. It isn't clear to me if it works on a 5S in recovery mode but if it looks promising to you then give it a try. Good luck!

 

[gregaz]

Ouch. I did a Google search for recovering photos from a phone in DFU mode and came up with this. It isn't clear to me if it works on a 5S in recovery mode but if it looks promising to you then give it a try. Good luck!

Thank you for that - the software pops up a message that says "Your Phone is in Recovery Mode, please Reset to Normal" - when I click Reset, it goes to apple screen flashing ... But it does NOT want to scan it in Recovery Mode. I'd say the instructions are kind of deceiving ... they make it sound like you can scan in Recovery Mode, whereas in fact it appears that it tries to get you OUT of Recovery Mode and then scan.

Again - thanks for the effort, I REALLY appreciate it!

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OK, on fourth try I was able to click Start and it attempted to scan the phone. An error comes up saying "There is an error happened on scanning.please try again"

Nothing is visible on the left side ... I think this just means that my phone is TOTALLY fried ... as in beyond recovery. SUCK!!!

 

[hellala]

I would buy your phone and fix it. If i got it fixed, i will send you all the photos, videos. Inbox me please

 

[PNutts]

Again - thanks for the effort, I REALLY appreciate it!

Sure and Darn. Those programs were light on details and I didn't want to download and start experimenting on mine. I put mine in DFU mode in iTunes and saw that the option to back it up is disabled. I had hoped it would be an option. I don't know if you are prompted to back up before the DFU restore. I couldn't find anything and again didn't want to go that far. I probably shouldn't be so wimpy. I have an encrypted iTunes backup so no big deal to restore from it.

 

[Jaguarr40]

I would say your only hope is to take it to an Apple Store Genius Bar and see if they can recover the phone, fix it, or at worse you might jut have to buy a new phone and lose the pics. Too bad you were no anywhere near wifi so that the photos would have backed up someplace else, also at this point until you take it to Apple if you do keep it in rice, You never know.

 

[Tom Levv]

As far as I know, you can't get back any photos from your iPhone if you don't have any backup files from iTunes and iCloud. The only hope is that you can make your computer recognize your iPhone and can easily copy the photos to your computer.