Mobile Phone and Tablet Data Recovery — Android Board-Level Specialists

Before you do anything else

1. Switch the device off and leave it off. If it is wet, that matters more than anything else on this list.
2. Do not plug it in to charge. Applying voltage to a wet or shorted board is how a repairable phone becomes a scrap phone.
3. Do not factory reset it, reflash it or install a custom recovery. Every one of those operations writes to the same memory that holds your photos.
4. Do not keep using a phone you have just deleted files from. Background sync, updates and notifications all write new data, and new data overwrites old data.
5. Do not put it in rice, in the airing cupboard or in front of a hairdryer. Heat warps components and drives moisture deeper under the shields.
6. Get it to a laboratory quickly. Call 900 899 002 or message us on WhatsApp and we will tell you how to package it.

The damage is chemical, not just electrical

Tap water, sea water, beer and pool water all carry dissolved salts, which makes them conductive. Once that liquid bridges two points on a powered board you get electrolysis: metal is stripped from one contact and deposited elsewhere, solder joints turn green or white, and microscopic tracks dissolve. The reaction needs moisture, contamination and a voltage difference. The only one you can remove immediately is the voltage, which is why switching the device off matters more than anything else you could do.

What rice actually does

Rice is a mediocre desiccant that pulls a little humidity out of the air in a sealed container. It cannot reach the liquid that matters, which is held by capillary action under the metal shields, beneath chips mounted a fraction of a millimetre above the board, and inside connectors. Meanwhile the corrosion carries on and the phone spends days quietly getting worse on the kitchen counter. Rice buys the corrosion time. It does not stop it.

What a laboratory does instead

We strip the device down and clean the bare board in an ultrasonic bath with a solvent that dissolves the salt residues and then evaporates completely. The board is dried, inspected under a microscope, and corroded components or lifted pads are repaired before power is applied for the first time. Only then do we bring the device up. In that order a soaked phone is often perfectly readable; in the wrong order, it is not.

Step 1: Free diagnosis in 4 hours

We establish what is actually broken: no power, a short on a supply rail, a damaged charging circuit, a boot loop, a dead display or a logical problem on healthy hardware. You then receive a fixed written quote, and nothing is done until you accept it. The diagnosis is free whether you go ahead or not.

Step 2: Stabilise the board

Corrosion is cleaned, failed components are replaced, broken pads and traces are rebuilt under a microscope, and a chip that has lost contact with the board is reseated. Where a display is needed to confirm an unlock, we fit a test screen for the job rather than repairing yours.

Step 3: Read the storage, not the phone

Once the device is stable we take a complete image of the internal storage and work from that copy. Nothing further is written to your device, and if it fails again halfway through we still hold everything already read. The same principle governs every case here, as our methodology page explains.

Step 4: Decrypt, rebuild and hand back

With your passcode the image is decrypted, the file systems rebuilt and the content sorted into photos, videos, contacts, messages and documents. You see a file listing before you pay anything, and the data is delivered on new verified media.

We will need your PIN, pattern or password

Every current Android phone and tablet encrypts its storage by default. The key is never stored in plain form: it is derived from the screen lock you chose combined with a secret held in dedicated hardware on the board, and the two only meet when the correct code is entered. Read the memory without it and you get random-looking bytes with no structure, no filenames and nothing to carve. That is not a limitation of our laboratory; it is the point of the design. Give us the code and we can decrypt what we read. If you genuinely cannot remember it, say so before you send the device and we will be straight with you about the odds.

A factory reset on an encrypted device destroys the key

On an old unencrypted phone a reset simply removed the references to your files and left the content in memory until it was overwritten, which is why it was often recoverable. On an encrypted device it works differently: rather than erase gigabytes of data, it discards the key material that makes that data meaningful. The bytes may still be there, but they can never again be turned back into photos. This is deliberate, instant and irreversible. Where it has happened we will say so at the free diagnosis instead of charging you for an attempt with no prospect of success.

Your privacy while we work

A phone is the most personal device most people own, and handing over the passcode is not a small thing to ask. Our information security management is certified to ISO 27001 by AENOR, access to case media is restricted and logged, and your data is securely erased once you have confirmed delivery, within the limited retention period set out on our methodology page.

Have an iPhone or an iPad?

Apple devices follow different rules: storage is tied to the Secure Enclave on the device's own processor, so a memory chip moved to another board is useless, and the recoverable failure modes are not the same as on Android. We handle them in the same laboratory, but the engineering deserves its own explanation — see our dedicated page on iPhone, iPad and MacBook data recovery.

My phone will not switch on at all. Is my data gone?

In most cases, no. The flash memory that holds your photos, messages and documents is a separate chip from the parts that usually fail: the charging circuit, the power management components, the display connector or the battery. A device that will not boot normally has a power or board problem, not a memory problem. Our job is to bring the board up for long enough to read the memory, or to read the memory directly if the board cannot be revived.

My phone got wet. Should I put it in rice?

No. Rice does nothing useful. It absorbs a little humidity from the air around the phone, but it cannot reach the liquid already trapped under the shields and beneath the chips, and it pushes starch dust into the ports. The real damage is electrochemical corrosion, and that continues for as long as any voltage is present. Switch the device off, do not charge it, do not dry it with heat, and get it to a laboratory quickly so the board can be cleaned properly.

Why do you need my PIN, pattern or password?

Because modern phones and tablets encrypt their storage, and the key that unlocks it is derived from your screen lock combined with a secret held in the device hardware. Without your code the contents of the memory are unreadable noise, even to us, and even with the chip removed from the board. If you give us the code we can decrypt what we read. If you cannot remember it, tell us before you send the device so we can be honest about your chances.

Can you recover data after a factory reset?

It depends on the device. On an older or unencrypted phone a factory reset mostly removes the references to your files, and a great deal of the content can still be carved out of the memory. On a modern encrypted phone the reset discards the key that protects the data, which makes everything on the device unreadable, and no laboratory can undo that. We will tell you which of the two situations you are in during the free diagnosis.

Can you get my WhatsApp chats and photos back?

In many cases, yes. WhatsApp keeps its message history in a database in the phone's internal storage and its attachments in the shared media folders, so if we can read and decrypt the storage we can normally rebuild the conversations, images, voice notes and documents. What we cannot do is bring back messages that were deleted long ago and have since been overwritten by everyday use of the phone.

The screen is smashed. Do you have to repair it to get the data out?

Usually not. A broken screen does not touch the memory. If the device still runs we can read the storage without a working display, and where a display is genuinely needed to confirm the unlock we fit a test screen only for as long as the extraction takes. Bear in mind that if the touch layer is dead and the device asks for your pattern or PIN on screen, we will need that code from you rather than from the phone.

What is chip-off, and does it work on encrypted phones?

Chip-off means desoldering the memory chip from the board and reading it on a dedicated adapter. It is a last resort, used when the board is too damaged to revive. It returns the raw contents of the memory, but on an encrypted device those contents stay encrypted unless we also have your passcode and the key material held in the device security hardware, which is not always recoverable once the chip has been removed. That is why we always attempt board-level repair first.

How much does it cost, and what if you recover nothing?

The diagnosis is free and takes four hours, whether or not you accept the quote. After it you receive a fixed written quote, and nothing is done to your device until you approve it. Standard recoveries start from 150 EUR plus VAT, and most cases are finished within 4 to 12 working days. If we do not recover your data, you do not pay for the recovery.