I recently inherited my grandfather's old Android flip phone, but the screen is mostly damaged with a lot of dead zones after he fell while chasing a tire. He's doing great now and has switched to an iPhone 16, but Verizon couldn't transfer his contacts to the new device. I've already connected the phone to my PC and managed to save his photos, but I'm hoping to access his contacts too. I think if I could mirror the screen to my PC, I could retrieve them. Any ideas on how I can do this?
2 Answers
To mirror an old flip phone to your PC, you'll typically need some kind of screen mirroring app that works with your phone. Since your phone’s screen is damaged, most mirroring options might not help directly, but you could try using USB debugging with a program like Scrcpy. This requires enabling Developer Options on the phone; if you can't see anything on the screen, it might be tough to navigate. If accessing the screen isn’t possible, another way to recover contacts might be using the contacts management tools provided by the manufacturer or checking online for any backup options.
If that doesn't work, you could consider getting the screen fixed—at least temporarily—just to access those contacts. Some repair shops might offer quick fixes for a reasonable price. Additionally, you can try popping out the SIM card and using a SIM reader device to retrieve contacts directly from the card, if they're stored there.
That's a good point. Some SIM readers are pretty inexpensive and can save you a trip to a repair shop. Hope you can recover those contacts soon!
I agree, Scrcpy could be handy, but you'll need to enable USB debugging first. You might also want to check if there's a way to use your computer to browse the files on the phone, even if the screen is broken. Sometimes the contacts are still saved in a file format that a PC can read. Good luck!