Broken iPhone 8, trying to retrieve data for new phone

[csdude55]

My girlfriend has an iPhone 8, and recently dropped it on the tile floor. After that the screen was flickering horizontally, and eventually stopped responding altogether.

She has a new phone now, but she doesn't know her Apple ID password and can't access the old phone to get anything. Apple said it will be NEXT TUESDAY (a week) before they can help her to recover the password, but this is her work phone and going a week without it is going to cost her several clients! So we're desperately trying to find an alternative.

Any suggestions on how she might recover the data from the old phone?

 

[Ledsteplin]

There's nothing anyone can do without the password. Hopefully, Apple will be able to help.

 

[csdude55]

Well, shoot.

With it being unresponsive, is there any way to wipe the data before returning the old one? Or is she stuck having to take it to a repair place anyway?

 

[Ledsteplin]

Well, shoot.

With it being unresponsive, is there any way to wipe the data before returning the old one? Or is she stuck having to take it to a repair place anyway?

I'm not sure. Maybe can wipe from another device. But would still need the password. The iPhone 8 is probably not worth paying for repair work. What would be the reason to have it repaired? Did she have an iCloud back up?

 

[csdude55]

Sorry for the late reply, the email from the site went to my spam folder and I just now saw it :-(

We really don't care to keep the iPhone 8 or anything, the concern is that she was logged in to all kinds of sensitive stuff on it... eTrade, credit cards, private work stuff, etc. We're a little nervous to send it back with all of that on there, and just HOPE that the employee that gets it doesn't wipe out our bank accounts :-O

Same goes for taking it to a local repair shop; there are dozens of local places that specialize in repairing iPhones, but at least one of them is well known for buying and selling stolen phones. That makes me hesitant to go to any of them.

So what I REALLY want is to find a way to clean it myself.

She did have an iCloud backup, and was able to restore everything to the new phone (yay!). I found the option to wipe the old phone from there, but of course it requires the old phone to go online first. Right now it doesn't show up when we plug it in to the computer or anything, so I don't know that there's a way for me to get it to go online.

 

[bear7962]

If she can get into her iCloud account, she can use the Find My IPhone app to erase the contents on the old iPhone. She can erase the device and also remove it from her active device
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[csdude55]

@bear7962 , the problem there is that the old phone has to go online for it to work, and I can't get it to go online. It doesn't automatically connect to the wifi or to T-Mobile, and when I plug it in to her computer nothing happens; it appears to charge, but it doesn't show up as a drive on the computer or anything.

I'm attaching some photos so you can get an idea of what I'm dealing with. You can kind of see the pin code keypad in the background but it's flickering up and down. Some keystrokes will register but I can't tell when it does, so I can't type in the pin code; I tried typing 0 0 0 0 over and over (not the pin code) and thought none of them were going through, until I saw a pop up that the phone was going to be disabled for 5 minutes.

Here's where it gets fun.

If I return it as-is, T-Mobile will only give me a $75 credit. But if I fix it then they'll give me a $600 credit! So I guess I don't have much of a choice but to either try to fix it myself or take it somewhere :-/

 

[bear7962]

$600 credit for an iPhone 8?

 

[bear7962]

$600 credit for an iPhone 8?

I was only telling you how she could wipe the phone, not how to resurrect it.
A refurbished iPhone 8 can be purchased for about $160, amazed that T-Mobile would give her that much of a credit.

 

[csdude55]

Technically it's a $200 credit for the phone, plus $400 as a credit towards the bill. Or something like that.

But that's with her buying an iPhone 13. I'm not sure if the same credits would apply if she bought a different phone or brought her own.

I just now asked her for clarification, she said that it was also part of a special for people migrating from Sprint to T-Mobile.

I was only telling you how she could wipe the phone, not how to resurrect it.

Oh sure, I understood exactly. I was just adding the recent drama to the fun But since I can't get it to go online to let iCloud do its magic, I guess I'm going to have to repair it either way.