lost photos

[jthompso]

I have a Vodafone phone. Don't know what type because I don't know where to find that info on the phone. It is basically a cheap android type. When I take pictures with the camera it normally goes to Google Photo and I work with them from that. Today I took some pictures but they are not showing up on Google Photo. What happened to them? The only thing I did between then and now is restarted the phone because it was doing wierd things. But that shouldn't disappeared the photos that were taken. They must be in there somewhere. A couple of them were really important. Hope someone can help. Thanks. 

[BandOfBrothers]

Hi @jthompso

Your phone should have a gallery app. 

If so the pictures should be in there or if the phone has a Sd Card they maybe in there. 

Does the back of the phone clip off revealing a battery?

If so then the make and model will be underneath the battery. 

If it has a non removable battery then in the settings will be a About Phone or similar worded section that will tell you what phone it is. 

That and or download phoneinfo from the Play Store and that will tell you all about the phone. 

Finally all is not lost as a Vodafone High street Store will be able to help you. 

[hrym]

Some devices use Google Photos as the gallery, I believe.   If that's set to sync with your Google account, it's possible that the pictures are stored there, even if they're not displaying on the phone, although I believe the default is to sync only on wifi, so you'll need to have had a connection.   If that's happened, you can access your photos via Google Drive as long as you've set "show photos in a folder on Google Drive", which you can do retrospectively (from within the Photos app, as I remember it).

If you're using internal storage, it's possible that's filled up, although you should have had a message to the effect that there's no more room.   It's also possible that this is a memory/resource issue and that the photos are stored but not displaying - this might also explain the odd behaviour you mention.

Restarting sometimes resolves this issue, but there are some other thing you can try.  First, clear recent apps.  You can also go into Settings|Storage and than look at Phone/Internal Storage - tap on it and the list of options should include Cache.  Tape that and you'll have the option to clear it.

If that still doesn't work, try going into Settings|Apps, opening the Google Photos one and hitting Clear Data.   You won't lose anything other than any changes you've made to the settings within it.

If your phone is filling up, you could look at adding an sd card and setting the camera to use that for storage.

[AngWhy52]

I was on holiday in Mallorca, Spain for 2 weeks from the 20th of August till the 3rd of September, on the last night the 2nd of September, my phone went all strange & it was like the screen was being pressed then it went black & wouldnt turn on again.I contacted vodafone help who assured me that i would be able to retreive my holiday photos & referred me to the local vodafone store, i went in & they confirmed that the phone wouldn't turn on & said i wouldn't be able to retrieve all my holiday photos, I am so upset as they are of sentimental value & precious to me & my partner. Can anyone advise if there is a way of retrieving your photos? I am so angry at being told i could then being told no. .

[hrym]

If the photos are on the device, they should be retrievable.   However, if the storage was approaching capacity, they may not have been stored, or some may be corrupt   Those wouldn't be accessible, I'm afraid.

It may be possible to connect your phone to a pc as external storage and explore the file structure.   You may also be able to run a recovery program (don't install anything on the phone as it'll most likely over-write some of the very files you're trying to recover.)

Storage should be treated as fragile and any content that's important backed up as soon as possible.   In the case of photos, that means syncing with a cloud service and Google Photos is the obvious one.   You can set it to do so only over wifi, which preserves your data allowance.   The trade-off is that anything taken before you get a connection isn't protected.

You can also store photos on an sd card.  This won't take up internal storage, but cards are more prone to failure than onboard storage, so cloud syncing is definitely essential (I've had card failure, but the cloud came to the rescue).

[techblogger911]

The gallery app should have all the photos in it, if not then please go to google photos and turn off auto uploading.

[hrym]

I wouldn't recommend turning off Google Photos sync.   The default is what they call "high resolution" (actually slightly compressed) and doesn't count against your storage allowance.   Any data that's not backed up doesn't really exist at all, and this is a useful safeguard against device failure.  The other default, as I mentioned previously, is to sync over wifi, so you'll need to get a connection periodically for it to happen.

In this case, I suspect a resource issue that's causing the photos not to display and that they are actually there - as long as there wasn't a "storage full" warning from the camera when they were taken.