It is very easy to accidentally delete or lose precious files on your Android smartphone. Whether you accidentally delete a picture, text message, vCards and more, Wondershare Dr. Fone for Android is here to help you recover your lost files. Not only is it for accidentally deleted files, but it can also be used for phones that have been damaged by water too.
Description from website
Directly scan and recover SMS, contacts, photos, video and more
- Recover photos, video, audio and documents from SD cards inside Android devices to a computer.
- Recover messages, and export both in HTML and XML formats to PC for easy reading, printing and importing to your device.
- Retrieve deleted contacts, including names, numbers, Email & addresses, and export in HTML, vCard and CSV to PC.
Preview & selective recovery
- Preview all recoverable contacts, messages and photos and documents before recovery.
- Selectively recover what you want by selecting them from the scan result.
Read-only and risk-free
- Keep data on your device original, no damage, deletion or modification at all.
- Only read and recover the data, no personal information leaking, or things like that.
Usage
One of the major downsides is Wondershare has limitations on the actual devices it can support. The list of devices they support is actually quite huge, but if you have a current phone there is a good chance it isn’t supported yet. For the sake of this review, I went through a list of devices: Samsung Galaxy Note Edge, Asus Zenfone 2, LG G Pad 7.0 LTE, Nexus 6P, HTC One M8(Android 5.0) and Nexus 5X. None were supported directly, but if I decided to root them the Dr. Fone software could actually recover it.
I’m not the type of person who roots devices, so I had to borrow a friend’s Note 3 running Android 4.4.2. Luckily he’s the type who doesn’t upgrade his software and he reluctantly let me borrow his device.
The instructions are actually quite simple. Install the software, which in my case was the Windows 10 64-bit version, and I entered the license code I was given by Wondershare. Set-up really was a breeze.
Next I had to enable developer options by going to my settings and clicking About phone, Build Number (tapped seven times), and then enable USB debugging. Once I did that and connected my phone to my computer’s USB port using the micro-USB cable I use to charge my phone, the software connected and started to scan my Note 3. It took about 110 minutes to scan all of the files, and by my tests it worked rather well. I had my friend sitting with me to verify what files were deleted and recovered and according to him, that was all of his files that he could remember. Luckily for me, my friend didn’t have anything scary I did not want to see. The only downside was that it was slow to recover the files, but given the fact that I assumed these files were deleted, I wouldn’t mind waiting if it meant saving files I needed.
Since the Note 3 wasn’t my actual phone I owned, I could not take screenshots for you guys to see the recovery process as he didn’t want his information on the web. Here is what the interface looks like from the screenshot from Wondershare’s website:
For the sake of this review I did back up “lost” files from the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 onto my computer and it was very easy. It was as easy as using any file managing software I’ve used before and am quite happy to keep Dr. Fone for Android installed on my PC as long as I own Android phones.
Summary
Dr. Fone for Android does work as advertised and requires minimal effort on your part if your device is supported by Wondershare’s Dr. Fone for Android. I don’t blame Wondershare for not being able to support every Android device and software version as there are literally thousands and thousands of versions out there. But that does mean there is a good chance that if your device is current, it probably isn’t supported by Wondershare yet. If you’re technical you can root your device and Dr. Fone for Android will work just fine.
There is a free trial version you can test before paying for the full license fee of $49.95 which is a lifetime license and supports 1-5 devices. Wondershare is continually adding more devices and software versions with free updates, so your money will go a long way with a lifetime license.
If you want to learn more, click here to go to Wondershare.com. They offer a whole suite of software products beyond Android.
