Recovering data from a dead phone

Meta Help!
1

My a53 (mostly) died last week.

I got another Samsung and was able to recover some things from the Google and Samsung cloud. However, most of my notes and conversations are inaccessible due to the phone being dead or encrypted. E.g., I cannot access the data via USB, the SD card shows empty folders and I do not have the password or key to retrieve the WhatsApp backup. No, I do not like WA, but most of my personal and volunteer-related conversations are through that channel.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

The only information I can provide is that one day the screen flickered, the next it went off for an extended period of time, the battery or board had been quite warm during that time and then the screen never turned on again. The only thing that appears to be consistent is on depressing the power button for several seconds there is a vibration buzz. Maybe on/off each time. I cannot tell. It gets warm when I do this. It seems to charge and that is about it.

I had someone bring it to the repair shop, busy as I am, which narrowed it down a bit. Battery, screen, screen cable replacements did not appear to solve the issue. I was not there in person, so I could not troubleshoot it with the technician who concluded that it was an issue with the board because quick attempts with replacements were not working.

At home, it does not appear to respond or show up when plugging it into another device.

2

is it USB-C on the phone? If yes, you can try and hook up a usb-c hub with power and monitor, and see if you can screen mirror to the monitor, then use a keyboard and mouse to get into the phone.

3

I thought about that. Planning to give it a try next Wednesday when I am in the office (where I left the hub).

I am open to other ideas. Keep them coming. In no rush.

4

Install the android development tools to try and use adb to pull the data off.

5

If you are lucky it is a problem with the screen connector (and the technician did not properly check that). So if you have time and motivation, and if it is doable on your phone model, you can remove the screen and try to reattach the cable. It happened once on my phone, but is it an easily disassembled model.