For brevity I won't duplicate prior answers. Sadly it's harder than a broken PC because the "drive" is not the same. What you learned about backup on your PC is even more important for a phone. That is, we only lose what we didn't backup.
I've got a Motorola Moto G (2nd Generation) that broke because of water damage. The screen doesn't do anything but I'm pretty sure the phone still works fine because I can hear messages coming in when I turn it on, and it also still plays the 'charger connected' sound when I plug it in. There's still some files left on the internal storage and I've tried getting them using the USB cable but sadly my phone was not in 'Connected as media device' mode when it broke, so that wasn't successful. Is there a way to get these files from the internal memory of the phone? I'm willing to spend some money on adapters or cables if needed.

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