How to USB boot pin-locked phone with broken screen?

Hey there dear community,

today I dropped my Xperia 10 II and broke the touch screen :cry:
Unfortunately I had WiFi turned off and also did shut it down afterwards. So no SSH access.
Now I am wondering if it is possible to boot the phone using USB and somehow unlock/remove the boot pin. Is the old telnet recovery image still around? Could this be done with that?

Thanks for any help!
Rozgwi

Search for fastboot please.

To be hontest, this is quite unhelpful.
But maybe I was not specific enough: I am aware of fastboot (I mentioned telnet, as that used to be the way to connect to the phone once the recovery image was flashed).

What I am trying to do is unlock the device lock/LUKS encrption without having the touch screen to do so

Have you tried it? (twelve characters more)

You seem to be hinting that it is possible with the recovery :slight_smile: I am looking into it right now.
If you have any advice or additional insights, feel free to share :wink:

Should you have a specific question or issue feel free to ask ;).

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There are spare parts available, e.g.

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Merci!
But I am afraid that I lack the time and tools to replace the display myself. Plus, I need to get a daily driver in the meantime which means to export stuff from the phone that was not on the automated backups…

So it turns out that recovery image wont work on Xperia 10 II: Fastbooting the recovery image fails on Xperia 10 II - #3 by olf.

edit: stupid me just missed there was two sections :man_facepalming:

Boot into recovery mode and there you can mount and unlock your phones partitions and should be able to copy the files you need.

This! is what I wanted to know. Thanks a lot :slight_smile:

For future reference if anybody is looking for this

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So did you get your data out? Also from encrypted drives?

FWIW, I recently went through a similar ordeal (on an Xperia X10 II) and there were a few finer points to consider on top of the docs.

My problem is a bit different from the one in the thread you linked: I could boot the phone if I was able to type in the security code. the broken touch screen prevents that.

But I could mount the home partition and chroot into the OS file tree (since the recovery image has it’s own).
The necessary steps are in fact described in the docs about using the SD card in recovery mode. What I did not do yet is dump the data I need to the card.

I meant the ordeal of restoration, not the original problem.

My X10II is also crashed since 1 month. I connected via USB-C == UBS-A adapter a normal keypad and than I switch on the phone an entered the pin manny times and vola the phone was on. Now you need WLAN for SSH. I think you can also switch on it via the keybord. I will test the way later on my X10III that I now use. Good luck!

here are more details what you can do on a broken phone:

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Thank you, @rdomschk! I will surely check out your thread once I got to flash my replacement phone that already arrived today.

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at least on android you have scrcpy
so much for linux phone

but only in the case that you had ADB enabled, the phone was unlocked and your computer was authorized for ADB connections

this would solve nothing in our case sadly

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This works! Could get my hands on one of these adapters. I removed the SIM card so I’d only have to enter the device lock and LUKS password as well as screen lock PIN.
While I don’t know if I managed to unlock the screen, it at least bootet up! And - hoooray! - lucky me: WLAN was still turned on! :tada: I can now backup everything using SSH.

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