Dr.Fone Review

What Is Dr.Fone?

The WonderShare Dr.Fone toolkit recovers, transfers, and manages iOS and Android phone data. Its extra features include password recovery and a system repair tool. It aims to give you more control over your device and protect your files.  

Dr.Fone lets you purchase the entire toolkit for either Windows or macOS. You can also pick and choose the specific tools you need. Test any of these with the free version.

You don’t need a Dr.Phone app on your device to access its features. Instead, install the software on your Windows or Mac computer and use a USB cable to connect your phone. 

Dr.Fone Features

Dr.Fone is cross-platform software, meaning you can manage both Android and iPhones on either Windows or Mac. However, you can only use the password manager on Dr.Fone for iPhone. There are also slight differences in the way it implements features between devices. 

I carried out Dr.Fone reviews for each individual tool below:

Phone Manager

This is the main hub to access and manage the files on your phone. From here, you can quickly locate music, videos, photos, apps, and other data. Moreover, the explorer lets you browse your phone’s file structure at will. 

You can move files around, set up new folders, photo albums, etc. You can also rename and delete chosen ones entirely.

Phone Manager also lets you send individual ones or batches to your computer. Moreover, you can transfer some from your computer to any open location on your phone. This is perfect if you have multimedia on your computer and want to quickly get it onto your device, or vice versa.

Transferable data also includes contacts, text messages, and apps. You can delete apps from your phone or install apps already stored on your computer, too.

If you are using Android, you can export media files to your iTunes library. Likewise, you can import files from iTunes to your phone. 

If managing an iOS device, you can rebuild your iTunes library with any compatible media file on your device or recently transferred from your computer. 

A particularly useful feature is the HEIC to JPG converter. It takes the native photo file format used by iOS and converts it for better accessibility on Windows or other devices. 

Phone Backup

The Dr.Fone backup tool backs up your entire phone to your computer, with the ability to restore it at any time to the same or a different device. It’s a great solution for making regular backups in case something goes wrong with your phone in the future. In addition, it will help you migrate your entire profile from an old phone to a new phone.

You can create full backups in one click or select exactly which data you want. Likewise, you can pick and choose which data to restore from a backup already on your computer. This can be an entire category such as contacts or call history, or you can dig into categories like photos and select the precise images. 

If some data on your phone has become corrupted or you’ve accidentally deleted something, choose incremental restore to only restore the missing data. This will quickly return your phone to normal without overwriting what’s already there. 

It’s also a useful option if you want to migrate data from one backup to another phone that has existing data on it. For example, if you’ve been using a new phone for several weeks and have only just found the time to restore data from an old device.

Dr.Fone iPhone users can also back up and restore iCloud and iTunes data in full or selectively. 

Phone Transfer

If you’ve made the bold jump between Android and iOS or vice versa, you’re probably wondering how you can carry over your data. The Dr.Fone phone transfer tool lets you do just that.

Whether on Mac or Windows, connect both devices and choose which phone is the original and which you want to move files to. Then it’s a case of checking the categories of data you want to transfer.

iOS to Android supports:

• Photos 
• videos 
• contacts 
• the contacts blacklist
• text messages 
• bookmarks 
• calendar 
• voice memos 
• music 
• alarms 
• voicemails
• ringtones.

Android to iOS supports:

• Photos 
• videos
• contacts 
• text messages 
• bookmarks 
• calendar 
• voice memos  
• music.

You can also use phone transfer to quickly migrate data between devices on the same operating system, though this is also possible using the phone backup tool. 

WhatsApp Transfer

For many people, WhatsApp is their go-to messenger service and has completely replaced texts. Therefore, it’s important to have a thorough method of backing up, transferring, and restoring WhatsApp data.

Dr.Fone handles this with a dedicated tool that can transfer regular and business chats between iOS and Android and create backups for restoring to any device at a later time. 

Despite the ‘WhatsApp Transfer’ name, you can also manage chat histories for LINE, Viber, Kik, and WeChat.

You choose whether to include file attachments in your backups. 

Data Recovery

There are many reasons why you might lose precious phone data. Interrupted updates, poorly developed apps, failing hardware, or physical damage can all play a role. Sometimes, you just accidentally delete something. 

Dr.Fone data recovery does a deep scan of your phone to find missing data, including on internal storage and SD cards. It can recover media files, messages, contacts, documents, and other system data. 

Of course, not all data is going to be retrievable every time. If you severely damage the device physically or expose it to water or extreme heat, you may be out of luck. However, Dr.Fone will still try. The free version is useful because it will let you know if data has been found, so you don’t have to pay just to discover nothing is retrievable.

If you break the screen or it won’t boot at all, it still does a good job of recovering data - you manage things on your computer.

Depending on the scenario, you can quickly restore data to the same device or keep it on your computer for transferring to another. 

Furthermore, Dr.Phone for iPhone also uses iTunes and iCloud to help you restore missing files.

Data Eraser

Selling or throwing out a modern phone can be a minefield because of the amount of information stored. Simply deleting files and removing accounts is not good enough. 

And sometimes you just want to get rid of private info, even if you’re keeping the phone.

Dr.Fone Data Eraser offers permanent data deletion methods for files, phone data, or the entire device with a single click. Firstly, it jumbles up the data so it appears corrupt and unreadable. Then, it uses a military-grade algorithm that overwrites internal storage and memory card sectors many times so it’s irretrievable.    

You have full control over what to delete, from individual files to whole categories of data.

System Repair

Over time your phone’s operating system can become buggy, slow, or even stop working altogether. Moreover, you might experience apps crashing and the App Store not loading.

Rather than performing a factory reset that can wipe your files and accounts, Dr.Fone repairs the system by sourcing the correct firmware and reinstalling it. Your files and data remain intact.

The Dr.Fone iOS repair tool has two options. Standard Mode attempts to fix the most common system errors, with no data loss guaranteed. Advanced Mode fixes more complex problems but might wipe your data.

Fortunately, if you pay for the other tools you can backup your data before doing a system repair and restore it afterwards. 

The iOS version also allows you to downgrade iOS without using iTunes. You can only go back as far as the iOS versions Apple still supports on the official site, however.  

Password Manager

The password manager is the only feature you can’t use via the Dr.Fone toolkit for Android. If you have an iPhone, you can get it for $14.99 or as part of the full suite. Confusingly, despite being an iOS-only tool, it can only be used on Windows computers not Macs.

The tool lets you detect the Apple ID and password for the connected phone, scan for email accounts and stored credit card info, and website and app logins. You can also find saved Wi-Fi passwords and the Screen Time Passcode.

You might use this feature if you lock yourself out of the device, it’s not booting, or the associated apps are not working correctly. In the case of third-party accounts, it’s also a quick way to recover forgotten passwords for use on other devices.

Even if everything is working correctly, Apple sometimes stores passwords for apps like Twitter even if you’ve logged out.

You can also export your iOS passwords in the correct format to import them into Chrome password manager and tools like Keeper, iPassword, Lastpass, and Dashlane.

Screen Unlock

Dr.Fone provides a lock screen remover boasting the ability to get inside your phone, even if you’ve forgotten the pin or the fingerprint sensor has stopped working. It can also bypass pattern locks and longer passwords.

Unfortunately, the success rate without wiping the phone’s data is not ideal with Dr.Fone for Android and virtually impossible for iPhone. Therefore, it’s not worth the effort for iOS users, especially when there are other methods available. 

You should only consider this feature if you are an Android user or an iPhone user with the full toolkit. 

Virtual Location

When connected to your computer, this tool lets you spoof your device’s GPS location.

MirrorGo

MirrorGo allows for screensharing to your computer much like you can with smart TVs and other devices. 

Dr.Fone Free Trial

WonderShare offers a Dr.Fone free version that you can use to test each tool to varying degrees. It restricts functionality to the point where you cannot complete most tasks, but it gives you a good idea of what you can accomplish with the premium version. Here’s a brief breakdown of the limitations.

• Data Recovery: Preview lost data but you cannot recover it.
• Phone Backup: Backup phone data but you can’t restore it to your device.
• Phone Transfer: Transfer only five contacts between devices.
• Phone Manager: Send only 10 files from your phone to your computer.
• Data Eraser: Preview what data is available to delete.
• WhatsApp Transfer: Backup chat history, but you can only preview other data, and nothing can be restored.
• System Repair: Discover if your device is repairable, only.
• Screen Unlock: Find out if your device can be unlocked, only.

Ease of Use and Interface

While the user interface itself is easy to navigate, it can be confusing in the beginning when figuring out which tool does what. Phone Manager, Backup, and Transfer, all seem similar at first glance. 

In fact, you can accomplish roughly the same thing by transferring files to your computer using Phone Manager as performing a Phone Backup. Likewise, doing an Android to Android or iOS to iOS ‘Phone Transfer’, is just a quicker way of performing a regular backup and restoration via the Phone Backup tool.  

Fortunately, you can get a basic feel for each tool before committing to a purchase.

After downloading Dr.Fone for PC or Mac you are greeted with a home screen that lists all of the individual tools on offer. These aren’t launch automatically, instead you must choose the ones you want. Then, they are downloaded within the software. Once finished, you find them under the ‘My Modules’ tab. 

Just click start and a new window for that tool will open. Each tool has a big graphic letting you know if your device is connected and various tips and prompts to walk you through the process. 

Phone Manager has a faultless design that replicates the device’s main file categories. You can also browse via an open file explorer. It helps you set up your phone for USB debugging if this isn’t already turned on by default.

Phone Backup is surprisingly fast and defaults to a backup folder within the Dr.Fone installation directory. It uses the .bak format, so you can import backups into similar software.

Restoring a backup is also very straightforward. Simply open ‘Phone Backup’, click ‘Backup History’ and use the dropdown arrow to choose the relevant date. You can preview the files in the backup and choose exactly what to restore. 

The other tools are just as easy, making use of checkboxes and intuitive navigation to complete each task. 

Dr.Fone Pricing

The Dr.Fone price varies between Windows and Mac and whether you require the iOS or Android toolkit. You can also get the full toolkit, which supports both Android and iOS devices. However, regardless of the combination, iOS users will have to pay more.

• Windows Full Toolkit: $139.95/year
• Mac Full Toolkit: $149.95/year
• Windows/Android: $79.95/year
• Windows/iOS: $99.95/year
• Mac/Android: $59.95/year
• Mac/iOS: $139.95/year

You can also purchase the tools themselves individually. This can be cost-effective if you only need one or two, but don’t make the mistake of paying more than the complete toolkit. 

All purchases get a 7-day money-back guarantee. Technical support is available 24/7 by live chat or email.

Dr.Fone Review – Verdict

Dr.Fone offers an ambitious set of features but they come together nicely under one easy-to-use toolkit. It has everything you could need for managing, backing up, and restoring your phone’s data.

The full suite is quite pricey, even with the combined discount. This is where a monthly plan would make it more appealing. Nonetheless, the ability to purchase a single tool for your specific needs makes it accessible to those on tight budgets. 

If you can afford a full toolkit and own a mish-mash of Mac, PC, Android, and iOS devices, the cross-platform support is impressive. It’s just a shame that iOS users draw the short straw when it comes to price.