Xperia 10iii display dead :-(

Devices
#1

Hello,

I need advice how to recover my data fom the phone. Or possible my phone?

Today the phone just turned the screen off while using it. I think i observed some flick of screen, maybe vibration too and the led turned on.
That’s it.

It had about 30-40% battery, using mobile data. Android support was running.
It is updated since Feb 3rd with Sailfish 5.

I am not able to turn it off: the led turns red, then vibration then again this light blue( or white?) led but the screen stays black.

Ah, while typing this i noticed that it restarts after some time by itself: led goes red then off, vibration, screen flicker, bright white led, screen flicker and the led reduced brightness. Screen is black at all time except for the flickering parts.

Do i have to wait till the battery drains completely to enter the fastboot mode for recovery or is there something else i can try?

Thank you!

Updated the topic to be clear that the issue is the display.

#2

First thing, I think, is to keep it charged. Maybe it’s getting a faulty reading of the battery status and going into emergency sleep mode?

#3

I am able to ssh into the phone, so I will be able to backup the data.

The bright led and then the dimm led look like the usual boot pattern so i tried a usb keyboard and entered the decryption key - after the 20-30s delay the usual blep sound of lock screen came, then I entered the PIN and the led turned off. And i knew all worked well although i am not able to see anything on the display.

Because i took my simcards out and the WIFI was not on … i used a usb dock with LAN and it showed up in my network. Is LAN a feature of SF 5? Then it really helped me!

#4

You can use a USB-C to Ethernet (some docks like the HP USB-C Dock G5 crashes the phone).

These commands will save some tears, you have to look around in the folders for various programs you have installed, if you list some of the programs you have, others might list the paths you can look in to get the configs / information.

You can use WinSCP (or equivalent on Linux/Mac) to get the data out of the phone, if the touchscreen dont work and you are able to enter MTP mode, i guess you could enable it from ssh but i do not know how.

Contacts :
devel-su -p vcardconverter --export contacts.vcf
Restore manually from file manager.

Calendar :
devel-su -p icalconverter export calendar.ics
Restore manually from file manager.

Messages :
commhistory-tool export -groups messages.exp
commhistory-tool import -groups messages.exp

Calls :
commhistory-tool export -calls calls.exp
commhistory-tool import -calls calls.exp

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#5

Good that you can ssh in.
Then you can also use scp (from your computer) to pull data out.

FWIW, a long (and I mean really long) press of the power button should definitely switch the device off, and if it’s not connected to a power supply (even a computer) it should NOT switch on again by itself.
Not quite as I just found out. See @rdomschk’s answer instead.

Unless that is happening, my guess is that the GUI is borked; probably fixable via ssh (been there done that).

What happened right before you started having these problems?

#6

Thanks all for the advices.

I used rsync to backup .config , .local and the rest of the ovious like picture, docs, videos. Also whatsapp files (is it possible to use that backup to get started again with whatsapp on android phone?).
I also have a week old SF backup. Not sure if messages and call history is included but i will use the export functionality just to be sure.

Next would be: can i somehow make the device work again?
Now, the device is connected to usb dock (so powered). If i press the power button the screen flickers white a few times and then stays black …
Not sure what to try and see if the panel is broken or is a software issue, except to try re-flash either with SF or with Sony android.
I really do not want to deal with “what device shall i buy next”.

#7

Well, nothing unusual. Had mobile data running for several days.
Whatsapp mentioned some 1-2 days ago that the storage was getting low …

#8

I was able to turn off the device via devel-su shutdown: this allowed me some seconds to plug it off the dock before it actually shuts down.

The thing is, not even the Sony logo and the “device is unlocked” appear after turning on, only black screen.
I am wondering if re-flashing will change something.

#9

Tricky, but yes. But ultimately only if you have the password the backup was encrypted with:
https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsapp/comments/1ac94i1/manually_transferring_whatsapp_files_from_android/

About getting the phone to work - you need to get in there and figure out what’s wrong first.

Again: what triggered the problem? What happened just before? An upgrade? Something else?

#10

Surely you’ve already tried this?
Pressing On/Off + Volume up + Volume down all three at the same time gives a hard reset. After that the devices powers off and on again. Good luck.

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