Phone Won't Now Charge / Connect to my Laptop, but was fine last week

[Small Man Big Horse]

I don't know if this is linked but I ran a Windows update at the weekend and ever since it won't recognise my phone (Samsung Galax A03), which is a bit of a problem as I've got six hundred photos on it relating to the photo strip comic I'm currently making in the hope of raising money for charity.

I've tried different usb cables, and it either or still refuses to connect, - the weird thing was that when I plug my phone in to a charger it doesn't it unless I turned off the phone, then it will happily charge. Except that last night it stopped doing that. I do have one of those chargers where you just have to put a phone on a circular object (sorry for the poor descriptions) which also won't charge, though it lights up and flashes when I try.,

I've made sure the laptops okay as I plug in a mouse and headphones via usb and it has no issues recognising them. So I think the phone has gone a bit mad all of a sudden

I've looked online and tried a few simple suggestions (including very gently cleaning my phone with a safety pin, and doing a software update) but nothing seems to work, and I just can't afford to go out and buy a new phone, and ask the people involved in the comic to spend another day dashing around London retaking photographs.

I've also tried to go on the house's shared wifi but my phone doesn't recognise the signal, and when I try and upload the pictures to a google drive my signal is so bad I have to go to the end of the road and upload them five at a time, anymore than that and my phone freaks out.

It's now got about 40% battery power and it looks like when that goes, I won't be able to use it anymore, which would be really shit considering I bought it in January and I've just checked and as it was from Cash Converters and the warranty ran out three days ago.

I really do want to be able to connect the phone to the laptop to transfer large video files (such as one for the kickstarter campaign) before it dies, so if anyone can help me out here on either front it'd be enormously appreciated.

[Small Man Big Horse]

And not it's dead. Only bought the bastard thing in January from Cash Converters but it only had a six month warranty that ran out on the 7th July. I'm so fucked, I tried sending the pictures via gmail but it send four of them and then froze and refused to send the rest.

[Sebastian Cobb]

It sounds like there's a hardware fault with the phone if it's not charging wirelessly either, you might need to take it to a phone shop or check to see if Cash Converters still have it in warranty.

So your main problem will be getting the files off the thing. I can help with that. Your easiest way, if you have the space is to zip the entire image/video folder(s) so it's one file.

You can then go to webwormhole.io and beam files between your phone and pc using browsers on both, I do this sometimes when I can't be bothered sifting through cables to find one that does data as well as charging. Or alternatively use wetransfer or something.

Does the phone see any wifi stations at all? And do you have a laptop? If it's just your house wifi that it's struggling with maybe you can go to a cafe or pub and connect both devices to that? Alternatively maybe you can connect to the laptop via bluetooth and send it that way? It'll be slower though.

Edit: Sorry I think I might've suggested things like warranty, that are non-starters.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Also does it have an SD card slot and are you using it? If it does and it isn't in use then you can dump your files on that. But if you are and it's setup to bond the SD card to the existing storage then it'll likely be encrypted so you can't just pop it in a card reader and get the files off it.

[Small Man Big Horse]

It sounds like there's a hardware fault with the phone if it's not charging wirelessly either, you might need to take it to a phone shop or check to see if Cash Converters still have it in warranty.

So your main problem will be getting the files off the thing. I can help with that. Your easiest way, if you have the space is to zip the entire image/video folder(s) so it's one file.

You can then go to webwormhole.io and beam files between your phone and pc using browsers on both, I do this sometimes when I can't be bothered sifting through cables to find one that does data as well as charging. Or alternatively use wetransfer or something.

Does the phone see any wifi stations at all? And do you have a laptop? If it's just your house wifi that it's struggling with maybe you can go to a cafe or pub and connect both devices to that? Alternatively maybe you can connect to the laptop via bluetooth and send it that way? It'll be slower though.

Edit: Sorry I think I might've suggested things like warranty, that are non-starters.

Thank you for all of the above, it's enormously appreciated - I found the receipt and the warranty ran out nine days ago, but I took your advice and went to a local phone shop who fixed it for £35 - apparently it was just the usb connector that was broken (which feels odd given that it wouldn't charge wirelessly) but whatever the case it now works and I'm just overjoyed - and I've now backed up those files to two different external hard drives as well as uploading them to my Google Drive, so I think they should be safe now, and thank you so much again for the advice. :)

[Sebastian Cobb]

Nice, glad you got it sorted!

[Dex Sawash]

Everything's coming up bighorse!

[Rodan]

Glad this is sorted, only just read the thread! 👍