Before this gets marked as a duplicate please consider that virtually every answer involves vague references to things like 'fastboot' that I honestly don't understand and can't find any information about. I have spent the last 4 hours scouring 100's of forum posts, reading ADB documentation, looking through wiki articles trying to learn the ins-and-outs of recovery roms, flashing, etc., and I still don't have a working solution -- not because the things I've tried haven't worked, but because information is so obscure and vague that I have no idea what to try.
I have a Droid Razr Maxx HD Global. The screen and digitizer are both broken. I have a new identical working device. I want to transfer everything -- system settings, app data, etc. -- from the old device to the new device. It's easy enough to move the SIM and external SD to the new device but I still have the issue of internal storage.
The phone is stock. USB debugging is disabled. I can't use ADB because of that. I also can't use tools like MobileTrans (or whatever) because of that. I can't enable USB debugging because I need the screen. I don't have a USB On-The-Go and I don't even know if it would work with my device. I don't have an HDMI cable or a monitor that accepts HDMI. I have tried multiple USB On-The-Go adapters and multiple mice and none of the mice are recognized. I have an HDMI cable and an HDMI monitor which works but does not help with the digitizer issue.
The most promising looking path I see so far is to install a ROM that has USB debugging enabled. Maybe it's a regular ROM, maybe it's a recovery ROM, I have no idea. I have this RSDLite tool that I guess flashes regular ROMs, or maybe recovery ROMs, or both, I can't tell. I have a regular and recovery Cyanogen ROM image. RSDLite can't load it. RSDLite doesn't show my device. I saw a few people say "oh just boot into fastboot and use that". Ok I'll just, uh, press the "boot into fastboot and use it" button? I have no idea what fastboot is other than a tool that I have in my ADB installation.
There is also this answer, which recommends typing setprop persist.service.adb.enable 1 somewhere, although I don't know where. The poster says, amusingly, "The Droid X does not have a physical keyboard - but if it did you could try this in a terminal." Anybody have any ideas about this one? My imaginary keyboard on my Razr doesn't work either. (Update: This requires screen access and a terminal on the phone, so, as per usual, that doesn't actual answer the question that was asked.)
I did try "using" (fsv of "using") fastboot to boot with the Cyanogen recovery ROM (which may or may not be the correct ROM and may or may not have debugging enabled and I don't actually know if "boot" permanently modifies the device or not):
fastboot boot /path/to/some_arbitrary_rom_i_got_on_the_internet.img
But it just got stuck on <waiting for device> and eventually gave up, something that all the answers involving fastboot seem to neglect to address. Not really sure how to proceed there, or if that's even the right path to be going down. (Update: Apparently the power + volume down button boot menu is called "fastboot" mode -- odd that it's this easy when all mentions of "fastboot mode" on the internet seem to involve some huge chain of drivers, weird tools, and arcane commands and never mentioned that on Motorola devices it's just the plain old boot menu. I will try this when I get home from work.)
The flood of advice like "yes just select X and Y in the boot menu" seems to help nobody with this problem because, obviously, the screen is broken.
HOW (keyword: HOW) do I somehow enable USB debugging on a device with a broken screen? Do I use fastboot for something? Do I find a ROM of some sort with USB debugging enabled? What ROMs have USB debugging enabled (it's not exactly something listed in their feature list)? How do I actually do this?
Minor rant: It's amazing how massive the headache is compared to how conceptually simple the problem (need to enable one setting and can't) is. Given that drop damage is the most common cause of accidental smartphone failure and that USB debugging is required to transfer system data (for some reason the Android folks tied the concept of "transferring data" to "development tool"), it boggles the mind why there isn't a more robust interface for this or at least a non-arcane working how-to out there somewhere for people who reasonably don't want to spend a week of their life becoming an expert on Android kernel image development and debugging.
fastbootcommand I mentioned as well as other options that either do not work or make no sense as per my comments there. As I said, I've been searching for hours, but the "information" out there, in reality, isn't information at all. – Jason C Nov 15 '13 at 08:37fastboot oem unlock). Probably the data wipe warning is buried somewhere deep in the legal agreement; also https://motorola-global-portal.custhelp.com/app/standalone/bootloader/unlock-your-device-a/action/auth says “You will lose all media and content on your device and will need to reinstall all applications downloaded from Google Play”. Therefore this procedure is not useful for data recovery. – Sergey Vlasov Nov 15 '13 at 18:52adb backup, note that it also asks to confirm the backup by tapping the on-screen button, and someone had problems doing this with a broken screen (although with a different phone model). You would need to solve this problem somehow, because you will not be able to use an USB mouse when your phone is connected to the computer. (Maybe a Bluetooth keyboard/mouse could be used at this time, but you probably don't have such a device; beware that most wireless keyboards use proprietary protocols, not Bluetooth.) – Sergey Vlasov Nov 15 '13 at 19:22