[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] beefriendly:
I have hit dead end after dead end, after many hours, just want to get copy of text messages off this phone somehow, and then erase all data. I have spent many hours on this, my level of experience with all this is beginner/intermediate, as I'm sure you will be able to tell by the ramble below. Skip to the last paragraph **** with the asterisks to get to the important part of my inquiry. if you don't want to read about what I have tried already.

Before you suggest the obvious, replace lcd, let me say that the motherboard lcd connector is damaged beyond repair. water damage, but the phone boots normally and seems to run fine. phone calls ring and other sounds indicate the phone is able to function but no display or touch function obviously. the usb port works. Also there is no samsung account on the phone so that option to bypass screen lock does not help. Kies, smart switch, etc don't help due to the "screen lock"

ie... There is a basic swipe to unlock "lock" on the phone, so otg cable options also hit a dead end. There are workarounds to bypass other lockscreens, but no way to do the swipe over otg that I can find. And even if/once I am able to swipe to unlock over otg, there are other obstacles to get around that may not be possible (click ok, navigate to enable usb debugging). If I am wrong here and there is an obvious solution I am missing, let me know (explain in detail if you can) and I will get the hub & cable back out and try again!

Dr.phone android recovery (data recovery/damaged device option) looks like the most promising, and here I have also run into trouble. Dr phone will put the phone into download mode but then always seems to fail "flash recovery package failed" at some percentage. dr.phone downloads the recovery package (I am selecting the correct model n910v) successfully, but the percentage before flash recovery package fails changes. It hasn't made it past 85%. the dr.phone log files don't reveal anything to my untrained eye.

Before running dr.phone, adb "permission denied"...after using dr phone, however, while the phone is still powered on and in download mode, once I close dr phone, I am able to start to get somewhere with adb! adb devices shows the phone as an emulated device, and (some) adb commands start to work! I think if I just am able to find the exact location of the stock messaging log, I will be very close.

If anyone can suggest some commands to try in adb to grab just the sms log I would be very grateful!

I can run "adb backup", and have tried a few other adb commands, but none of the standard backup commands actually contain a sms log.

***Anyway, I think the best option might be to flash a custom recovery after getting the phone in download mode & adb working successfully (showing as an emulated device) with dr.phone as described above... However I have no way to tell what firmware version the phone is running (don't want to brick it or loose data), and I am really looking for specific directions on which clockworkmod or twrp recovery file to try for n910v, that will allow me to get a sms backup, and/or a recovery that will have usb debugging enabled.

Thanks for the input! sorry for the rambling post, I hope it's possible to make sense of it.. ANY help greatly appreciated!