Black screen of doom.

[GFA86]

Hello, I have recently encountered an issue with my iPhone which Apple not only has not been helpful with, but has actually made it worse.

The short of it is, after my iPhone's screen shattered to the point where not much could be seen on the screen, it seems the phone registered as though the screen was being tapped (and with it, passcode attempts were being made) even though I wasn't tapping it.

By the time the screen got replaced, there was a dark screen with 'iPhone Unavailable' in the center and nothing else.
Not "Emergency" at the bottom and no "Try again in such amount of time". Just dark.

I did the "recovery mode" thing by connecting the phone my computer/iTunes and the phone seemed to restart and gave me the black screen but now with "Try again in 7 hours" message below added.

I waited, then was prompted to type my passcode twice, did so correctly, but then the black screen appeared again, now as it was at the beginning, no time set, nothing. Just 'iPhone Unavailable".

I've tried to do the recovery mode thing again to no avail.

At the Apple store I have basically been told "Apple doesn't deal with that" (Then who TF does?? it's a ****en Apple product, but I digress) and I have asked at 2 data recovery places but they want quite a bit of money and are giving no guarantees.

I am mostly concerned with recovering messages that were incoming from an android, and therefore were not saved on my iCloud.
I had not done a back up in about a year and a half, so recovering the other stuff would be nice but I am mainly concerned about the text messages.

Does anyone here have experience with this?
And is there any store or person that you would recommend for this?

I am open to sending my phone to another state (I'm in the South of the USA) as long as it is with someone experienced.

For some reason at the 2 data recovery places they came across as inexperienced with this to me. Felt like they were just winging it and trying to save themselves by saying "no guarantees though".

While I understand that things could go either way, I would like to work with someone that has at least been able to retrieve data from an iPhone in this mode once.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Life lesson. If stuff is important, back it up.

 

[okkibs]

iPhone unavailable appears after 10 unsuccessful attempts to enter the code and at this point the device has to be reset to factory defaults and all data on it is lost. Whether you entered the code wrong or because of the broken display doesn't matter and it's actually known that broken displays do that. This is not something that can be circumvented hence the recovery attempt had to fail.

There is a hardware module involved in tracking the 10 attempts and after these are exhausted that hardware module locks out until the iPhone is reset to factory defaults. This module is hardened against attempts to circumvent it and your data would be destroyed if that module was messed with. Imagine your iPhone were currently in the hands of a third party attempting to gain access so they can read your personal data (such as law enforcement attempting to gain evidence in order to send you to prison). Would you want the iPhone security to be circumventable?

iPhones can break in various ways like any other smartphone and take all your data with it and the only way to safeguard against it is by backing it up.

That's as comprehensive an answer as you'll get but if you don't believe it you can send it into Rossman repair group inc in Texas and you'll pay postage to them and back to you because they will confirm that the data is unrecoverable and send it back.

Here is "proof" for this: https://www.ontrack.com/en-us/data-recovery/mobile

This is one of the most competent recovery specialists in the world and if you scroll down you'll see a red "can't do" section that starts with "Disabled phone" at the very top. That's the state your iPhone is in. You can send it in for a free evaluation with them and they too will confirm that recovery from disabled state is impossible.