My dad passed away recently and I have his iPhone. His estranged wife is the primary holder of his phone plan and has marked the phone as lost. He was planning to divorce her after a messy breakup but passed away before he could.
I just wanted to back up the photos in the phone but can’t access it at all.
Aside from asking her to unlock the phone, do I have any other options to access his photos? I doubt she’d unlock it since she knows I have the phone and marked it as missing anyway.
Apple’s security is pretty good and will work against you in this case. If you know the password you can unlock it but otherwise you’re probably kinda boned for the time being.
You could still hold onto it and hope someone comes out with an exploit down the road that bypasses the security but it’s a longshot.
If it has an eSIM I would power it down completely or store in a faraday pouch to block signals to it, as if they do a remote erase on it there’s no coming back from that.