With the prevalence of repair companies its hard to decide whom to trust with your phone repair or phone data recovery. This tiny device that gave you access to the world and stores the majority of your memories (photos) for the last X time now stares back at you with a blank/black/flickering screen.
What to do.
It would seem that there are many options for phone recovery and a range in prices for either saving your data or repairing your phone. How do I choose, who do I choose and what are the implications if I hand my phone over to the wrong agent?
In many instances our labs are delivered devices by distraught people who have been told their device either needs to be escalated to a data recovery lab or they have been told "its not possible" and are just not ready to give up.
Ultimately, the best indicators of whom to trust with your case is how well the person you speak with conveys an understanding of the fault or situation you are facing and how prepared they are to deal with your device. This, in short, is experience.
A recent case that came into our labs was escalated to chip off recovery work as the data was critical to the client. On removing the main NAND chip we quickly realised this device had been worked on previously by someone with likely good intentions, but lacking in experience. The result was that the NAND chip was damaged whilst being removed prior to coming to our labs and this had thus rendered the case a failure. Had we been able to look at this NAND first, its likely we could have transposed the chip-ware correctly and saved the data. The below image shows the damaged NAND we observed under microscope.
Ultimately, its always best to ensure the team you put your hardware in front of has the experience and tools to tackle the worst case version of what may be wrong with your hardware. If you are currently facing data loss or hardware failure with any mobile phone and would like to talk about recovery options to save your data, please call the lab on 0800 328 2522 or visit us at https://www.datalab.co.nz/data-recovery/cell-phone-recovery