How to control your Android phone which has a broken screen

Who hasn't dropped their phone?

Well, alright, maybe some people never do but I'm not one of them.
I dropped mine a couple days ago and since then, the screen doesn't respond to touch.

I figured that that was it but while I'm waiting for my new phone to be delivered, I wanted to be able to still use the device.

Fortunately, since I am doing development on the phone, I have it set up for it. Only problem is that only my home desktop machine is authorized to access the phone via ADB. Bummer but it's still a good thing.

What do you need?

• USB cable
• Android SDK and more specifically adb
• Python (to make things a little easier)

Connecting to the phone

I'm using Linux at home so the first thing is to do something like:

~ sudo ~/Android/Sdk/platform-tools/adb devices

This will start the adb daemon and you will be connected to the phone.

You can then use adb with your user account normally. We use sudo here to start the daemon and avoid authorization issues.

ADB provides a shell that you can use to do a lot of things:

~ adb shell

xx@mako> pull /sdata/DCIM/Camera 

Will copy the files inside /sdata/DCIM/Camera onto the hard disk of the computer (in the current directory).

~ adb shell input tap 100 100

This will instruct the phone to do a tap at the given coordinates.

Python to the rescue

I wrote a small python script to do a bunch of actions because typing adb shell input tap xx xx becomes rather annoying after a while.

It goes like this:

#!/usr/bin/python

import subprocess

alive = True

while (alive):
    isCommand = False

    text = raw_input(">")
    if text == "send":
        isCommand = True
        subprocess.check_call("adb shell input tap 700 1150", shell=True)
        print "sent"

    if text == "sup":
        isCommand = True
        subprocess.check_call("adb shell input swipe 300 900 300 100", shell=True)

    if text.startswith("tap"):
        isCommand = True
        coords = text.split()
        subprocess.check_call("adb shell input tap " + coords[1] + " " + coords[2], shell=True)

    if text == "shownotif":
        isCommand = True
        subprocess.check_call("adb shell input swipe 400 10 400 1000", shell=True)

    if text == "unlock":
        isCommand = True
        subprocess.check_call("adb shell input swipe 400 1150 400 200", shell=True)
        subprocess.check_call("adb shell input text 0000", shell=True)
        subprocess.check_call("adb shell input keyevent 66", shell=True)

    if text == "home":
        isCommand = True
        subprocess.check_call("adb shell input keyevent 3", shell=True)

    if text == "end":
        isCommand = True
        alive = False

    if text == "enter":
        isCommand = True
        subprocess.check_call("adb shell input keyevent 66", shell=True)

    if text == "back":
        isCommand = True
        subprocess.check_call("adb shell input keyevent 4", shell=True)

    if isCommand == False:
        text = "\"" + text.replace(" ", "%s") + "\""
        subprocess.check_call(["adb", "shell", "input", "text", text])

Things to change

The script works well on my phone, which is a Nexus 4.

First thing to modify is the unlocking code: subprocess.check_call("adb shell input text 0000", shell=True)

For this line, replace the 0000 with your personal PIN

The 'send' command will also need to be changed to use the proper coordinates.
On my screen the WhatApp or Viber send buttons are bottom right, which is around 700,1150.

Your phone will most likely be different depending on the screen size and DPI.

Commands:

send: Send the message

back: Back button

home: Goes to the home screen

enter: Enter button (for example after entering the PIN, [enter] will unlock the phone)

sup: swipe up (from bottom to top, here again you may need to change the numbers)

tap: taps at the given coordinates (example: tap 400 400)

unlock: Unlocks the phone with the hard coded PIN

shownotif: will show the notification list (swipe from the top to the bottom of the screen)

What's next?

You can also run apps with adb: 

adb shell am start com.whatsapp/.Main

This will launch the WhatsApp app.

After that, by using swipe, tap and whatever else, you can still use your phone and download files from it while you wait for your new device to appear at the front door.

Basically just experiment (I archived my notes from Google Keep using adb) and have fun.