Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra

[bos]

A childhood friend of mine recently lost her daughter to suicide and I was asked to try to recover the photos from her phone. They got the pin-code for the SIM-card as well as full access to their daughter's mail, but they have found no way to unlock the phone. They even sent their daughter's death certificate to Samsung, asking them for help, but they didn't receive any reply at all. So, I'm the last resort despite I have near null knowledge of Samsung's brand of phones.

What are the options - if there are any - here? Since it's an Android phone I'm assuming there is a Google account linked to it. The parents said their daughter used to have an iPhone but switched to Samsung. Can AppleID be used instead of a Google-account?

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[melvin]

If the data is that important, why not sending it to DR that works with phones on daily basis?
Apple ID has nothing to do with Google account.
It's quite old model so there problably are ways to get the data back/unlock it. But you need someone with proper tools and knowlege.

[bos]

They got a quote from a DR company larger than mine, but that quite was beyond mind blowing (like two months salary) so they couldn't accept it.

[Cleanroom]

We can do it in house, but you are looking at $2500. The reason why DR companies charge a lot is that the hardware they use to do it with is not unlimited. The people that make the hardware ( Cellebrite/Graykey) charge per unlock on there end. So surprisingly the DR companies that can do it do not make much of anything on the unlock.