I recently traded in my old phone at T-Mobile, and the employee said he backed up everything. However, when I got my new phone, I found out all my photos from the last two years are gone, including precious pictures of my late cat and my new kitten. I'm feeling really upset about this, especially since there seems to be some confusion about the devices. My parents were told it was an Android phone, but when we got home, it turned out to be a Google Pixel, which is technically an Android but has a different interface. Is there any way I can recover my lost photos? Maybe from the phone's hard drive?
1 Answer
Unfortunately, no. Modern phones are encrypted by default, and a factory reset clears the encryption key, making recovery impossible. However, first check your Google account; your photos might have been backed up to Google Photos if you had that set up. As for the phone confusion, consider that all Google phones run on the Android OS, but they have a unique user interface. So it's understandable how this might have caused some mix-ups.
So it's essentially an Android phone, just customized by Google? I get it now, thanks for clearing that up!