Solved! VERY IMPORTANT, NEED HELP

[desperateartist]

I formerly had the ZTE (model Z982) ZMax Pro & had it for approximately two years. Was it the perfect phone? No, but it did its job, being that it was all my family could afford at the time. Now, over the course of my time w it, I never really had any issues. It was a pretty decent phone all things considered, esp compared to my last one, even more so considering my other options.

That changed when my power button stopped working. Even that was fine for awhile, though, bc I enabled an app to manually use the touch screen to put it in sleep mode (phone is on but screen is off) & use the volume buttons to turn it on. This changed however when I was scrolling through Twitter & the screen just... froze. The app crashed, but only half of the screen displayed it. So half the screen was like split between Twitter & my homescreen. After like thirty minutes it overheated & died. Obviously this was an issue bc my power button didn't work.

I have tried EVERYTHING suggested on the internet; charging it regularly, charging it through a computer as suggested, using the pinholes for resets, every single button combination recommended, even tapping down the buttons, I went through the bloody process of removing the back cover & having my sister's boyfriend's electrician father unscrew + take out & put back in the battery. When the buttons are taped down for an extended period of time & I plug it into the charger, the homebutton glows & pulsates & ZTE startup screen appears before fading back to black. The phone even vibrates.

Is there any hope at all? Any solution? Clearly this is some manufacturing issue, & my future father in-law said the battery appears to have been damaged (he said it seemed like it was burnt from the inside), so would purchasing a new battery & taking it to a tech for repair be worth it? Or is there some trick to actually turn it on for at least 5 minutes? I have been saving for months & recently purchased the Galaxy S10+ which is everything I've dreamed for in a phone. You see, I'm a graphic designer & have incredibly valuable photos on my phone that I need desperately work that for some reason were backed up to my drive, is there any possible way to retrieve these files? That's all I really care about.

 

[webworkings]

I don't see you being able to fix it all on your own. If you really want what is on the phone's "Internal" memory then you are going to need to contact a tech and see what they would charge you to fix it. You may want to call a few to get a better idea of cost. It will be pure luck if nothing is fried.

Now if you had a SD card installed, and had the files on the card, as long as the card was not converted to "Internal" vs "External" storage, then you should be able to just connect the card to another device and get the files from it.

In the future, I would really suggest not keeping all your stuff on the device. Not even on a SD card. Back everything up to a computer, cloud account (google, etc.), external drive, etc. Something that is better for longer term storage and safer for keeping things on.

Good Luck!

 

[desperateartist]

Yeah, I had an SD card & backed up my phone to both Drive + Mega, but sadly there was approximately fifteen files that I need that somehow were missed in the process that weren't on my SD card sadly. I have a really strict deadline for a comission & was hoping that perhaps I would be able to get away without the assistance of a tech as that would cut into my editing process. Just my luck this happened right during a hurricane when I was evacuated, too.

Do you think I that, if there wasn't a fry, a new battery could help it function for just a day or so?

 

[webworkings]

I can't say. This is why I suggest taking it to a tech. They may be able to get it going (if you are really lucky) so that you can get the items off of it. I don't honestly think a battery would do it, on top of the fact that you said the power button doesn't work, so without it you can't turn it on even if the battery change would help.

In the future I suggest never relying on auto saves for data (files, images, etc.) to anywhere. I don't know how many times I have heard 'it didn't save ...' insert whatever number of files each one lost. It is always wise to double check what files get saved.