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Usb uses 2pins and ground for communication, I don't remember the number assignments. If either the TX or RX get intermittent, you cant communicate. Except for selling her soul to google, google drive did wonders transferring ALL my wife's junk data phone to phone and then also to the laptop. It partially changed some settings in the new phone to be like her old phone.

I have some success getting a new cord. For one or two attempts, but it isn't reliable

My experience is it's always a bad cable, unless it's my wife's phone in which case it's always a broken USB port.

Time to sync with Google depends on your upload speed. For most cable broadband packages, this is 5 Mbps.

MicroSD-card?

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If it's older android, this socket tis next to the sim card from your provider under the back cover. If it's newer, it's on the sim card holder

Yeah save it on the micro SD card or email them to your self.
Remember a lot of phone cables are charge only these days, they lack the data transfer wires.