I left my phone in a store in Mexico. I realized 10 minutes later, right as I got on my cruise ship which was about to set sail. I called the phone and talked to the lady at the store. I told her I was going to send someone to go get my phone and ship it to me. She appeared to be understanding and helpful but before they got there to get my phone, someone did a factory reset (?) on it. Yes, my locked Galaxy S24. I didn't even know that was possible but I guess all you have to do is hold the power button and the up volume button and the phone is now yours. It sucks losing a phone, yes, but what I really wanted were all my photos from my vacation. Why didn't I have them backing up to the cloud you ask? Well, apparently that feature doesn't work when you're in the Caribbean.
So here's the question...I've turned on my phone and have gone thru the initial set up but have not synced it with my old phone or anything like that yet. I want to know if there's a way to access those photos before I write over them? Please come to me with your wizardry and make me happy again.
I've gotten a notification to clean up my storage and such, and one of the suggestions involved "invisible backups". Idk much about tech like that, how it's stored, retrieved, used, etc. but it may be the type of thing that you're looking for...
I've heard that police can recover info from a phone even after it's been reset... If the bad guys can do it- I bet there's some super smart good guy who could help or guide you through the recovery..
I know there are "secrets" in settings like clicking 7 times on the last box of the intelligent wifi settings (pretty sure it's the version of the software) enables or uncovers "connectivity labs"
I travel to the Caribbean often. My photos always back up to Google, as well as my nightly Samsung backups taking place. Did you check Google photos? They won't back up, however if you are not connected either by mobile data or wi-fi, so when you travel, it pays to buy a mobile data plan and an internet package on the ship. If you had an internet plan on you ship, the backups would have occurred when you were on board. You may be able to recover everything but the photos from the day you lost the phone - check Google. I also have a T-Mobile plan that allows for unlimited text and data in most countries while traveling and calls in Mexico and Canada. So, I'm connected on and off the ship.
