It can quickly happen that you accidentally or thoughtlessly delete a photo on your smartphone. In the past, the image would simply have disappeared, but modern devices are better at this. A deleted photo is rarely truly gone.
The smartphone has practically completely replaced the compact camera for taking photos and videos. However, this means that all important moments are stored on a single device. Panic quickly sets in when pictures are suddenly deleted. But don’t despair, because there are ways to recover the deleted photos on your phone for both iPhones and Android smartphones.
How to Recover Deleted Cell Phone Photos?
Recover Cell Phone Photos on iOS
If you want to recover a deleted photo on your iPhone, all you need to do is go to Apple’s Photos app and go to the “Albums” tab. Here there is the Recently Deleted folder where you can find the deleted photo or video and click “Recover” to move it back to your gallery. Incidentally, the photo app keeps deleted photos for a total of 30 days before they disappear for good. You must respond within this period. After that, the images are usually lost if you haven’t taken any further backup precautions.
Recover Deleted Photos on Android
For Android smartphones, the recovery depends on which app you use to manage the pictures. For Google Photos users, getting it back is relatively easy. From the navigation bar, tap Gallery, then select Trash. Touch and hold the photo or video you want to recover. Then tap on “Restore”. It then goes back to the Google Photos gallery and the albums it was saved to, as well as the Gallery app on the phone. If you save photos via the Google Photos cloud function, they will remain in the recycle bin for 60 days. Only locally saved objects are retained for 30 days. But beware, the recycle bin has a capacity of 1.5 gigabytes. If this is exceeded, the app deletes photos permanently.
If you use another gallery app on the Android smartphone, the process is often similar. Most pre-installed apps from individual manufacturers such as Samsung or OnePlus have a corresponding recycle bin function.
Can you recover permanently deleted pictures?
Difficult. Permanently deleted means that your photos are not in the “Recently Deleted” folder on iOS phones, nor in the Trash on Android devices. Either the 30-day period has expired on iOS devices or the storage limit in Google Photos has been reached and items are automatically deleted. Then your mobile phone photos are permanently deleted and usually cannot be restored if you have not taken any further security precautions.
A final option would be to seek professional data recovery advice. However, getting deleted photos recovered by a professional is usually very expensive. You can circumvent this measure by taking precautions in advance to back up your photos and other data.
In general: create backups in advance!
In order to protect a nice memory captured with the mobile phone camera from accidental deletion and to save yourself the work of restoring it, it is always worth backing up the photos. Whether you use the cloud option or choose another storage medium is a matter of taste. When backing up data, the “3-2-1 rule” generally applies. The digits stand for:
- 3 copies: Back up the data to be backed up, in this case the photos, in 3 copies, i.e. the original itself and two additional backups
- 2 Media: Save these 3 shapes on two different media, in case of damage the data is then secured
- 1 other place: Keep a backup off-site, for example in a cloud