Accessing a phone with smashed screen

[ihrsetrdr]

I'm a Fitbit junkie so I frequently go for walks hikes etc. Yesterday I found a cell phone by the roadside with a smashed screen. The phone had a hard shell case which protected the rest of the phone from damage. When I got home I put it on the charger....and saw signs of life! It is charged, and you can see the back-light along the upper right edge of the shattered screen.






Of course I am curious to access it, what would be a oood approach to accomplish access? I did already
use the charger cable plugged into a usb port on my desktop, but have no way to instruct the phone to connect file system.

 

[Janus67]

Probably replace the screen

 

[ihrsetrdr]

Probably replace the screen

I'm sure that would run somewhat north of a hundred plus dollars. Perhaps if it were a more upscale phone then it would be worth it, but just for curiosities sake maybe not.

 

[knoober]

IIRC you're handy with Linux? Depending on your choice of distro the package will be differently named, but 'android-tools' will be a good start for arch based distros. Not sure for Debian based, but I think there is a similar naming convention.

Android-tools contains adb (Android debugging bridge) , fastboot and a few other useful things. If you can power on the device, you can issue:

 adb  devices

Blank output means that adb cannot see the device. Other output is the serial number/code for the device. Depending on whether or not adb can see the device, you can access the files on it in various ways (a search for adb in your fav search engine will show some of the more common commands)

 

[ihrsetrdr]

The part # was partially obscured, but this phone appears to be a LG Stylo™ 5 TracFone. I watched a tutorial for replacing the screen, this could be an interesting project. I would do the disassembly before I bought the replacement kit, as there is the potential to break components during that operation. Amazon has a complete kit with tools, adhesive etc for $46. I can blow that much in just seconds at the casino, but this <50$ project would keep me busy for hours.

 

[habbajabba]

Easy peasy to replace a screen. The trick is in getting the replacement screen to have the metal sub-frame already attached. I ordered a screen once and the tards in TX, who didn't speak real good english btw, sent me just a screen by itself. Meaning you have to pry the old off and then attempt to glue a new one on while still keeping the integrity of the subframe. The rest is just tiny screws and small components that plug in. Personally you can get a better phone off ebay for the same price and trouble of fixing this one.
Screens by themselves are cheap btw. $20 or so. You don't want that.