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Dead phone · Water damage · Smashed screen · Dead board

Recover the data from a phone that won't turn on

The phone is dead and four years of photos are on it. That is the call we take most, and the honest first thing to say is that on a phone the data and the phone are the same problem. Get it powering up again and everything is still sitting there.

Tell us what happened to the phone What it costs →

Free diagnosis · no fix, no charge · 30-100 days warranty on the repair.

Can Data Be Recovered From a Phone That Will Not Turn On?

Usually, yes — and not the way people expect. On a laptop, data recovery means taking the drive out and reading it on another machine. A phone has no drive to take out. The storage is soldered to the mainboard and encrypted with a key held by the phone's own processor, so those chips are unreadable anywhere except in the phone they came from. What that means in practice is good news: phone data recovery is a repair. Fix whatever stops the phone booting — the screen, the charging port, liquid damage, a fault on the board — and the files were never lost in the first place.

Which makes the question worth asking a different one: what is actually wrong with the phone. We diagnose that for free, tell you what the repair costs, and you decide. If we cannot get it running, you pay nothing.

Four Ways a Phone Loses Its Data, and What Each One Costs

Nearly every "my data is gone" call is one of these four. The price is the price of the repair. There is no separate recovery fee stacked on top.

Phone data recovery routes and what each costs
What happenedWhat the job actually isPrice
Screen is smashed or black, phone still buzzes and rings Nothing is lost. The display is the output, not the storage. Replacing it puts you straight back into a phone that has been running the whole time. Screen replacement, priced per model. From S$35 on iPhone, S$45 on Samsung
Went into water, the pool or the toilet A chemical wash: the board comes out and is cleaned of the corrosion that liquid leaves behind, before that corrosion eats a track it cannot come back from. Time matters more than anything else here. Water damage repair. From S$45 on most phones
No screen, no charge light, completely dead Board-level work — a failed power circuit, a bad charging line, a component knocked off by a drop. This is the one nobody can price from a description, which is why the diagnosis is free. Board repair starts from S$20 on iPhone where the fault is a straightforward one. Quoted after a free diagnosis
Phone works fine, files deleted Check the bin before anything else — iPhone holds deleted photos for 30 days in Recently Deleted, and Google Photos keeps its own trash. Past that, an honest answer is below. No charge to be told where to look

What to Do in the First Hour, and What Not To

  1. If it went in water, power it off and leave it off. Do not charge it, do not plug it into a laptop to "see if it shows up". Liquid on its own is survivable; liquid plus current is what corrodes a board past saving.
  2. Skip the rice. It does not draw moisture out of a sealed phone. All it does is cost you the days when a wash would still have worked.
  3. Stop trying to power it on repeatedly. On a board with a short, each attempt pushes current through the fault. People often arrive having turned a repairable phone into a harder one in the waiting.
  4. Do not let anyone open it to "check" without a plan. A phone opened, poked at and closed again is a phone with a stretched battery cable and a torn seal. If it is already open, bring the screws.

None of that is a sales pitch. It is the difference between a S$45 wash and a board that is not coming back.

iPhone or Android: Does It Change Anything?

Less than people think. Both encrypt their storage to the device, so neither has a chip-off route that produces readable files, and on both the fix is the same: repair the phone, let the owner copy the data off. Where they differ is what you can do afterwards. An iPhone that boots can be backed up to iCloud or to a Mac in one step, and if the phone is signed into an Apple Account, some of what you thought was lost may already be in iCloud Photos. On Samsung and other Android phones, Google Photos and Google Drive do the same job, and Samsung's Smart Switch will move everything to a new handset once the old one is running. Worth checking both before assuming the worst.

What We Will Not Tell You

That we can get into a locked phone. We cannot, and the shops that say they can are either lying or doing something you should not want done. A phone's storage is encrypted against its passcode and its own secure chip. Without the passcode there is nothing to read, by design. If it is your phone and you have lost the passcode, the route back is your Apple Account or Google Account, not a repair bench.

We will also not sell you a deep scan for deleted files on a phone that is working perfectly. The recovery software that finds deleted files on a computer's hard drive works because the data sits there unencrypted until something overwrites it. Phones do not behave that way. If the file is not in a bin, a sync or a backup, the honest answer is usually that it has gone, and you should hear that for free rather than pay to find out.

And no phone repair should be the reason you have only one copy of anything. Once your phone is back, spend two minutes turning on iCloud Backup or Google One. It is the cheapest repair on this page and the only one that prevents the rest.

Bring It to Any of Our 4 Branches

People's Park Centre in Chinatown, Tampines, Yishun and Jurong Point, open 11am–9pm daily. Addresses and directions are on our locations page. You can walk in, but message us first with the phone model and what happened to it, so we can confirm we have the parts your repair needs before you make the trip. A liquid-damaged phone is worth bringing in the same day rather than waiting for a convenient one.

Related

Why Citri Mobile for phone data recovery?

Apple Independent Repair Provider Testimonials Our locations

Phone Data Recovery FAQs

Can you recover data from a phone that will not turn on?
Often, yes. On a phone the files are not on a drive you can pull out and read somewhere else. The storage is soldered to the board and locked to that phone's own chip. So recovery means getting the phone to power up for long enough to copy everything off, which is a repair rather than a lab process. A dead screen, a dead charging port, liquid damage and a board fault are all things we fix every day, and once the phone boots, your data is simply still there. Diagnosis is free and we tell you what we find before you commit to anything.
How much does phone data recovery cost in Singapore?
It costs whatever the repair that revives the phone costs, and that depends on what is wrong. A liquid-damaged phone starts with a chemical wash — S$45 on iPhone, S$45 on Samsung, and much the same across the other brands. A phone whose screen died is a screen replacement, priced per model. Board-level work is quoted after the free diagnosis because no two boards fail the same way. There is no separate recovery fee on top: you pay for the repair, and the data comes back with the phone.
My phone screen is smashed and black. Are my photos gone?
Almost certainly not. A broken screen is a broken output, not lost storage. The phone underneath is usually running normally. Replacing the display gets you back into it, and nothing has to be recovered at all. If you want the data before you decide whether to keep the phone, tell us and we can fit a screen, let you back up, and go from there.
My phone went into water. What should I do right now?
Power it off and leave it off, and do not charge it. Liquid plus power is what kills a board. Corrosion needs current to do its real damage, and every charging attempt feeds it. Skip the rice; it does nothing except waste the hours that matter. Bring it in as soon as you can, because the gap between a same-week wash and a two-week-old board is the gap between a phone that boots and one that does not.
Can you recover data from an iPhone that is disabled or locked?
No, and nobody reputable will. An iPhone's storage is encrypted with a key tied to your passcode and the phone's own secure chip, so without the passcode the files cannot be read — by us, by a lab, or by anyone else. That is exactly what the encryption is for. If you know the Apple Account the phone is signed into, your recovery route is iCloud and Apple's own account recovery, not a repair shop.
I deleted photos and I have no backup. Can they be recovered?
Check the bin first — iPhone keeps deleted photos in Recently Deleted for 30 days, and Google Photos has a trash of its own that outlives the app being uninstalled. Beyond that, be careful who you believe. Phone storage is encrypted and aggressively reclaimed, which means the deep-scan recovery that works on a computer hard drive does not have an equivalent on a modern phone. We would rather tell you that than take your money for a scan we know will come back empty.
Is phone data recovery different from laptop data recovery?
Yes, and it is worth knowing why. A laptop drive is a separate device: it unplugs, and a working drive can be read on another machine even if the laptop is finished. A phone has neither of those properties — the storage is soldered down and cryptographically married to the board it came from. So laptop recovery is often about the drive, and phone recovery is almost always about the phone. If it is a laptop you are asking about, our laptop data recovery page covers that job properly.
Will you keep or look at my data?
No. We fix the phone and hand it back to you to back up yourself — in most cases we never need to be in your phone at all. Where a repair does need the phone unlocked to test it, we'll say so and you can be there while we do it.
What if you cannot get the phone working?
Then there is nothing to pay. Diagnosis is free and we quote before we start, so the only thing you risk by bringing it in is the trip. If the board is beyond a repair that would hold, we will tell you that rather than sell you attempts. Repairs that do go ahead carry a 30-100 days warranty, honoured at any of our 4 branches.

Walk In With the Phone

Walk in to any of our 4 repair shops for your phone data recovery. We're open 11am–9pm daily, no appointment needed — message us first if you want us to confirm your part is in stock.

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