Retrieve picture from a dead phone

Is there a way to retrieve a picture from a dead cell phone????

Friends phone died a while ago.

He had a picture of a big fish he caught in it.

Now, without the picture, it's just another "big fish" tale.

No idea what's wrong with the phone.

It just stopped working one day.

It is a smart phone.

I saw something on the web about pulling files and pictures off a hard drive.

Was wondering if the same could be done with this phone.

Hi:

It’s not clear from your post what “dead” means for the phone in question....

Did your friend not sync his data (including photos) to the “cloud” (e.g., Google Drive, whatever the fruit-flavored cloud service, or his carrier’s cloud service)?

And I presume he did not “manually” back up his photos by transferring them to a PC?

He may be out of luck, without some sort of expensive forensic data recovery service.

I don't think they had cloud back then.

Not really sure how dead it is, but I think it just doesn't turn on.

He did try and change it when it first died,  but nothing.

I asked him to find it and bring it to me. 

Not even sure what brand it is.

All i remember is he's had it for a long time before it stopped working.

Just looking to get the pictures out.

I think I'd better wait until I have it.

From what he said, it just didn't turn on.

Not really sure what that means.

I'm not a cell phone guy.

I have one, a flip phone, and all I know how to do is enter names and numbers, answer, and look at the time.

Other than that, I don't even answer it.

I like emails on the desktop and talking face to face.

Don't even care for land line phone.

Yep, I still have a land line.

Normally you can get images and other data off phones by connecting them to a computer by USB cable. If the phone is electronically dead this won't work because the phone has to be switched on but it normally possible to physically remove the sim card and examining it by plugging the card directly into a computer. You will probably need an adapter since most laptops have an SD card slot but phones use micro-SD cards. You can buy dual size card readers to plug into a USB slot on a computer. You will be looking for a folder called 'DCIM' as that is where photos are normally located.

If the phone or the card have suffered physical damage you may be out of luck but still worth trying.

Chris Cosgrove