Broken screen while debug mode was disabled. How can I re-enable adb?

Question

The screen of my phone is physically broken, so it doesn't display anything, but the touch aspect does seem to be working, as I can unlock my phone, and get haptic feedback.

Before I go to get it replaced, I'd like to back up some personal data from the built-in memory to the SD card. I'm fairly certain that if I can get adb to recognize the device, then I can use Android Screencast to see where I am touching the screen and do what I need to do. Problem is, when I plug it in, it's not recognized, while my emulator is.

I suspect that I might not have USB debugging enabled, which I think is necessary for adb to work. If this is the case, can someone give me screenshots of their Droid X (running 2.3.X) going from the home screen, through all the menus, to activating debug mode? Hopefully I can do it by dead reckoning and adb from there.

Edit: I haven't changed anything about the ROM or launcher; it's all stock.

Answer 1

The Droid X does not have a physical keyboard - but if it did you could try this in a terminal. I'm leaving this answer here for other phones that have busted screens.

setprop persist.service.adb.enable 1

That turns on USB debugging (on a HTC Dream running RC29), and is one of the ways to root the Dream when it has a busted screen.

Answer 2

This should help: http://code.google.com/p/androidscreencast/. Allows you to view your android screen and control your phone from your computer.

Answer 3

Had exactly the same problem recently (on a friend's Nexus S running stock Android 4.0 with a completely broken screen & digitizer and adb switched off):

Get a recovery system running with adb enabled. Then use adb console to access the device's data and create a backup. On Nexus S you cannot use the sdcard to get the data off the device, so you need to use adb for that.

Prerequisites:

1. Phone does have fastboot mode with boot command enabled
2. Phone still works (except for the screen)
3. SDK installed (with working adb + fastboot executables)
4. CWM recovery image downloaded to /tmp/cwm.zip (has enabled adb when started)
5. Linux with installed uudecode (part of package 'sharutils' on Ubuntu)

How to do it:
a) Start device in fastboot mode and boot the CWM recovery this way

me@workstation:~$ fastboot boot /tmp/cwm.zip

b) wait some time for CWM to boot, then log into the device

me@workstation:~$ adb shell
shell@android:/ $ mkdir -p /tmp/backup/data /tmp/backup/sdcard

Replace DATA_DEV and SDCARD_DEV by the real devicenames
depending on your phone, it's most likely one of these:

• DATA_DEV: /dev/block/mtdblock*
• SDCARD_DEV: /dev/block/mmcblk*
• use 'df' command to find candidates by size.

shell@android:/ $ mount -oro <DATA_DEV> /tmp/backup/data
shell@android:/ $ mount -oro <SDCARD_DEV> /tmp/backup/sdcard
shell@android:/ $ exit
me@workstation:~$ adb shell tar czf - /tmp/backup \| uuencode foo | uudecode -o - > /tmp/backup.tar.gz

Caveats and further explanations:

• Why 'uuencode'? ADB console seems to intercept the data stream and obviously inserts a carriage return before each single line feed. Uuencoding the data before transmitting it via adb's stdout protects against that.
• Does not work on encrypted devices
• You can also just repeat the process on unmounted devices and transmit all of the /dev/block/* one by one and figure out which one is for what afterwards
• You need to find a suitable CWM recovery image yourself