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Recently my phone decided to brick itself for no reason. Turned the screen off and it didn't turn back on anymore. At first I thought it was a dead screen but after a few hours of trying to force reboot the screen now shows up, albeit stuck in the boot screen, as if a boot loop.

Brought it to a repair shop and they said something along the lines of whatever inside is used to make the display and touch work - that thing is now dead.

Now since the phone won't boot and fastboot doesn't work either (stuck on the screen with "FASTBOOT" when I try to), is there any way to access files on the device without it being on?

ADB didn't recognise the phone because it won't even boot. For information, it's a Xiaomi Redmi Note 10, stock ROM, not rooted, never dropped nor had it broken and repaired before. Was in perfect condition until this happened. Been using for 3 years.

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    "is there any way to access files on the device without it being on?" - No. Hardware-Backed Keystore relies on a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to store cryptographic keys
    – alecxs
    Commented Aug 28 at 6:27

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is there any way to access files on the device without it being on?

No, there isn't. All the data on modern Android devices is encrypted, and the encryption keys are kept in the Hardware Keystore. Getting the keys out of there so that files can be decrypted requires the device to be running, so that the Trusted Execution Environment can provide the keys.

All this is done so that your data is secure if your phone gets into the hands of criminals (or police/intelligence agencies - the threat is quite similar).

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  • I don't think this is necessarily true for a Xiaomi. On most versions of Android I've used except US vendored ones, encryption is optional and up to the user whether it was turned on. If there is no buried key, extracting the data may be practical.
    – R.. GitHub STOP HELPING ICE
    Commented Aug 28 at 20:37
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    for sure every Xiaomi Android device is encrypted. it's not even possible* to disable encryption. you are talking about something different.
    – alecxs
    Commented Aug 29 at 16:14
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The only feasible method of data recovery is probably to fix the cause of the problems with boot process. You could remove the eMMC (“ROM”/“storage”) chip, use specialized hardware to perform modifications on it (the bootloader and the operating system are not encrypted), but you still have to move the memory chip back to the original board to access encrypted data. This would be cumbersome and expensive process. Additional complication is that the files used in the boot process are signed – you can't arbitrarily modify them.

Unless data on the device are worth some tens of thousands EUR/USD or more, it is simple too expensive to bother with this.

As always, when using any computer system or storage device that you use to store valuable data, including a phone, these three rules apply:

  1. backup,

  2. backup (frequently), and …

  3. backup.

Many people realize the real importance of backups only when it's too late.

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Unfortunately, without the device running, accessing encrypted data is nearly impossible due to modern Android security.

Your best bet might be fixing the boot process flashing the stock ROM or repairing hardware could help. If the storage chip itself is damaged, recovery gets expensive and tricky.

This is a tough reminder of the importance of regular backups

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