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Google Nexus 4 Samsung i9250 stuck in endless reboot loop - can I recover pictures?

I have a stock (non-rooted) i9250 Nexus 4 that refuses to complete the boot process. When I try to go into recovery mode, the robot with the red triangle appears. I then press Power + Volume Up I get the "Android system rcovery <3e>" menu. Have done a wipe cache partition, but that did not change anything.

Now, two questions:

1) Is there a way I can access the pictures on the device before proceeding any further? Like using a USB connection from my PC? There are important pictures on the phone and I'd like to make sure that the last sync has copied them all...

2) I assume that I'll need to reflash the phone and would hope that if I reflash it with the latest stock firmware I might be able to access the pictures. Where can I get stock android images for the i9250?

Thanks for your support,

Tom
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lherrou
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Tom,

It's certainly worth trying to connect your phone via USB to a PC and seeing what you can access. It certainly won't hurt anything. My guess is that the phone won't mount as a drive, so you'll get a message that there's hardware connected, but it won't show in your list of drive.

Given the problems you are describing, I suspect that you have a hardware problem, so a factory reset isn't likely to help you. One common problem is sticky buttons, so you might go around all the buttons with a cotton swap dipped in alcohol, then work each of the buttons a little and then step through the reboot process and see if you can get the phone to boot properly. Check for physical damage, and if your phone has a liquid damage indicator that you can access (under the battery, perhaps), check that as well. If the button wiggling fails and there's no other clear signs of something broken or damaged, you don't have a lot of options. Pretty much anything you are going to try at this point is likely to wipe any data that remains on the phone.

Let me know what you find out,
LHerrou
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LHerrou,

you are, of course, right: The phone won't show up as a drive, as android has not booted.

I was rather thinking of a method to access it somehow via the USB debugging, firmware update or recovery options  that, too, make use of the USB port even when android is not started. This is pretty much like hacking the phone...

As far as the buttons are concerned, these are clearly not the issue, as I can navigate around the recovery menus without any problems.

The problem is rather likely to be linked to some sort of firmware update that has taken place just prior to the failure. (Ok, I didn't mention that in the original post.) That's why I asked for ways to get the latest stock firmware updates for the I9250 to reflash it.

Thanks
Tom
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lherrou
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I'm afraid that didn't work in my case (the image downloaded to the phone but did not install for unknown reasons, possibly a hardware defect). However, as it might just work fine for others, I'll accept this reply as an answer.