It’s easier than ever to ensure you’ve got a backup of your phone or tablet. But however diligent you may be with backing up your devices, there’s little you can do if you experience some accidental data loss — whether it was your fault or not.

iSkysoft’s Android Data Recovery hopes to be able to get you out of a tight spot if some of your precious data has gone missing. The app, for Windows, connects to your Android device and shows you all of its contents. This includes data — deleted or not — from your photos, videos and audio files, to your contacts, messages and call history as well as WhatsApp data.

Android Data Recovery makes it easy to find your content with a wizard-like interface that guides you through the process in a few steps. Simply connect your phone or tablet to your PC via USB and the software should recognize your device. You’ll need to have USB debugging enabled — which comes with its own risks — but if you haven’t then Android Data Recovery gives you instructions specific to your version of Android on how to do so.

Once the app can see your device, you can begin the scanning process in a few clicks. You’ll be given the option to search for particular file types and also asked whether you want to search for only deleted files or all files on your device. Your choices dictate how long the scanning will take. The more content Android Data Recover has to sift through, the longer it will take. In my case, searching for everything, it took around 15 minutes but your mileage may vary.

When the scan has completed, you’ll be presented with all of your content in a file system-like interface for you to browse through. You can filter by file type and deletion status and simply check the boxes next to any content you wish to recover. I tested Android Data Recovery’s ability to find deleted files by erasing a number of images, videos and other files from my devices before scanning and it was able to find everything I tested it with (granted, these files had only recently been deleted and had not been overwritten - the longer you use your phone for after deleting something, the less likely it is to be recovered).

You can save any content to a location on your PC, but not back to your Android device directly. This isn’t such a problem for most media files as they can easily be added back to the device later — media files, for example — but can be a little more fiddly with contact and message data types. 


iSkysoft’s Android Data Recovery is said to have support for 6,000 devices. I can’t vouch for that exactly but it did work with the few Android handsets I have, each of varying ages. You can check if yours is on the list here.

iSkysoft’s Android Data Recovery software is available as a free trial for Windows. With the trial, you can scan your devices and preview data that can be recovered. In order to actually complete the restoration, you’ll need to purchase a license for the software through the app or get a license key from iSkysoft’s website. This works well if you want to see if iSkysoft has the solution for your needs before you spend any money. Licenses start from $49.95 for a single user which might seem a little steep — as there are free options out there — but if you've lost some precious pictures or videos or other valuable content, it may not be too much to shell out to get that back.

Read more about Android Data Recovery at iSkysoft’s website. If you like it and want to purchase a license, you can do so via the iSkysoft store.