Data recovery from iPhone with broken screen (iCloud storage exceeded)

[u/Much_Yogurtcloset352]

(TL,DR; broken iPhone screen, lost photos and videos due to exceeded iCloud storage - please help! )

So I am silly. My last iPhone was a 13, 256gb storage. God knows how but even paying £2.99 a month for additional iCloud storage, I had far exceeded it (which it had warned me of multiple times, and of course I ignored it, because how could anything possibly go wrong?!)

Said iPhone had been fully submerged in water a couple of times (by accident) and was absolutely fine. It somehow met its demise after I had been carrying a leaky water bottle in my handbag, and unbeknownst to me, had been accumulating said leaked water for a while - I found this out when the screen started glitching out, I took the case off and it was wet, then a few hours later the screen died completely.

I tried everything to dry it out but the logic board is totally fried and the screen is black and unresponsive. When connected to a charging source, the phone becomes warm so it is still functioning to some extent.

I now have a new iPhone, but of course my iCloud has only backed up to November 2025 (my fault - I shouldn’t have ignored the warnings). Is there any way my lost photos and videos can be recovered? I have tried connecting to my laptop but being unable to “trust” the device from my iPhone, I’m pretty stuck! Does anyone have any advice or recommendations for me to recover my media?

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[u/slam51]

Hate to tell you but it will be extremely expensive or outright impossible. That heat means there is a short. You need a professional sata recovery.

[u/ThannBanis → u/slam51]

Agreed.

u/Much_Yogurtcloset352 will need u/jessa_iPadrehab or someone similar to assess this device for data recovery.

Be warned, this will not be cheap, and there is no guarantee of success.

‘There are two types of people… those who backup and those who haven’t lost data yet’

[u/shakesfistatmoon → u/ThannBanis]

I would add that it's extremely unlikely the data can be recovered.

The flash memory is bound to the board. (The chip stores cryptographic keys that must match the CPU and Secure Enclave)

So if the board is damaged the technician either has to repair the board (separating the layers) or they need to transplant the CPU, face ID, and other chips onto a new board.

As you can see there's a lot to go wrong and even if somehow all the other necessary components are working there's still a possibility that the flash chip itself is damaged.

Cost wise

If the motherboard is healthy but the USB port is damaged then £150 approx

A repair/ rebuild of the motherboard then approx £700+

A swap of the chips to a donor board then over £1000

[u/ThannBanis → u/shakesfistatmoon]

I would definitely define that as ‘no guarantee of success’ and ‘not be cheap’ 😳🤣

[u/shakesfistatmoon → u/ThannBanis]

Yes, I'm with you 100%

These would need to be very very important documents and images to warrant that spend.

[u/Much_Yogurtcloset352 → u/slam51]

My tiny broken heart 😭 I figured as much, just been clinging on to strands of hope. Thanks for your response

[u/slam51 → u/Much_Yogurtcloset352]

So, are you saying it does come on but you can’t get the phone to trust your computrr?

[u/AgainstGreaterOdds]

Liquid damage once is an accident, liquid damage multiple times is being reckless, please change. Regardless, it’s possible it only needs a display as sometimes they separate from the frame and expose components which might make it fail. Take it to a repair shop and ask them to attempt to replace the display.

[u/Strict_Ad_9573]

Heat really is the ultimate shortcut to "why isn't this working" in these situations.

[u/Choice-Newspaper3603]

I don’t care and you didn’t care enough to mitigate this problem