Files Stored@PC & Phone recovered: How to get my Contacts back?

Help Fairphone 1
1

Dear my fellow Fairphone community,

I have a problem with my FP. I thought all my contacts are stored on my Simcards but after
recovering it - it turned out it wasnt. Before I recovered my phone i did a 1:1 copy of all files
via USB to my Computer (check.Screenshot).

Now my quesions:

How I can get my contacts back?
Is there a contact file?
Where it is?
How do I extract the contacts?
How do I import it again to my FP?

Thanks in advance for all you shared thoughts and help.

Best regards from Germany

Tpoint

2

This might help you:

3

Hello Stephan,

thanks for your quick reply.

This folder is not existing. Just check the following screenshots. I was searching thru all subfolders
for “data”. It turns out this result:

All subfolders in the “android” folder look like this:

I was reading all threads related to my problem. I didnt helped in my case, so I hope to get some more helpfull ideas here.

Thanks for the support in advance.

Best regards,

TpoinT

4

My 1:1 Copy of my old Phone

The search result “android/data” leads to nothing related to “contacts”. The data folder contains two empty folders “cache” and “tmp”:

…further checking now “system/app” search results. It points to a “fp_update_3-1.zip” (200MB) file in a “update” folder. The unziped file shows some “contact” files. For the documentation - see picture below:

My recovered phone

It shows a “fp_update.zip” (1.5MB) in “updater” folder. It contains a “updater.sig” and “updater.xml”. Understandable because its not used yet - no contacts saved.

I would be happy if you can share some ideas.

Regards,

TpoinT

5

contacts.apk and contacts.codex refer to the app called “Contacts”. They don’t contain the actual contact files.

You are having a problem here because you did not copy the whole phone, only the part visible for Windows Explorer. The root folder ("/") is not there and that’s why you don’t find /data. I fear, you won’t be able to recover your contacts… :frowning:

6

Hi Stefan,

thanks for bringing some light to the “contacts.apk and contacts.codex” thing.
Im browsing my FP and my computer drives as administrator. I adjusted my windows explorer to see hidden folders and files.
On both devices (Drive and Phone) I dont see any “data” folder in Root directory.

:frowning:

7

OK one last thing: Search for the file “contacts2.db”. Maybe it turns up in the end… :wink:

8

Uff… thats really bad news. How about all the apps is it possible to move a whatapp database to FP get at least some contacts back?

9

I don’t know if this is possible, try it out! :wink: To be honest I doubt though that contacts are stored in a whatsapp database… :frowning:

For the future: Go to the Contacts app, click the menu button and choose “Import/Export”.

10

Danke! Schade um die Konkate…

11

Since you are using Whatsapp, Facebook etc. - did you also check your Google account? I vaguely remember that I had to switch off syncing my contacts with my Google account every time I wiped my FP. I think it might be turned on by default, so you contacts could already be in the cloud.

1 Like
12

hi humorkritik,

that might be an option. how to get contacts thru my google mail account?

13

Sorry, but since I switched off syncing my contacts with my Google account, I don’t know. Google should know, but I’m not sure what to make of those links. You should conduct some more research on the web on that matter…

14

If you are using Google account to take the backup of your phone contacts. To restore your contacts login to Gmail with your Google account login ID and password. Restored and you can go as back as 30 days. From here you can also select the custom dates, Once you have selected your restoration point. Click the “Restore” button to restore contacts .

15

It is a nice guide, but the problem is that you don’t have any backup of the phone data.
So, there is no backup data to recover from, you can only try the recovery methods from some recovery tools to restore contacts.