Chosen Solution

My S7’s screen glitched out and stopped working. I have a replacement phone, but would really like to transfer the data from the old one. Ideally, I’m looking for a way to remote control the phone’s screen from my PC, but I need to get to that point without accessing the phone directly. If anyone has any tips they would be much appreciated.

Hi, I assume that you mean that the digitizer (touchscreen) is not responding but the LCD screen is still OK. If so, try connecting a USB mouse via an appropriate OTG (On The Go) cable and use it to navigate through the phone to enable the settings so that you can transfer the data. Here is a link to just one supplier of the OTG cable. It is not a recommendation to use them, it is shown to give an idea of the price. There are other suppliers online that may suit you better. Just search for Galaxy S7 OTG cable for results. You can also connect a USB keyboard the same way, but for some reason not all keyboards will work. Be aware that the phone’s battery will discharge more quickly because it is now also supplying power to the mouse/keyboard. Hopefully this is of some help

This is where it becomes very tricky. I had run into this once and you have to hope that the touch screen is still working on the broken LCD.

  1. I used an MHL to HDMI adapter (You will need a HDMI monitor and the adaptor to be plugged into a charger for AC power for this) and attempted to use the touch screen to get to bluetooth settings. 1b. I then also disabled screen lock to make things easier when accessing data from the device.
  2. Connected a bluetooth mouse just to make things easier for me as the touch screen was damaged in my case.
  3. I enabled developer settings (Tapping on build number 7 times which is located in settings > about phone (here or >) > software) and enabled USB debugging.
  4. I then used a program called Samsung Smart Switch with the device connected and did a full backup of the phone.
  5. Now you can easily restore this backup onto another samsung phone (at least of the same android version or newer). Not sure if a backup from a newer version of the phone will work on older android operating system.