You do not expect a random phone repairer without deep data recovery knowledge to give such advice- thy just want to make repairs and take their money.
I've not been in such situation but data in eMMC are 99% recoverable with the right tools. I've had the privilege to witness forensic procedures at the EFCC so yeah even data on burnt devices can be retrieved..
I wouldn't go through these hussles for $65 worth of $Pi coin though.
This will definitely going to be a life lesson , am sure that next time he won’t allow such to repeat it self again . Base on the look of things is not gonna be easy to find a good or forensic repairer and the process may even cost more than the $pi base on the recent value, but is still good to know that we have some skill repairers that can fixed stuff like that while preventing loss of data .
I stopped saving seed phrases in digital storage and sometimes, cloud services because of how vulnerable these systems can be. I have experienced it first hand when one of my family member's wallet was drained because he stored it in a cloud service that got compromised.
So a few years ago, I created a new wallet and wrote that the seed phrase in a notebook with a semi-hard cover and never looked back since. It's not the best way due to the presence of physical accidents/attacks but at the end of the day, its the safest at the moment.
Sorry to your friends, OP. I hope they don't experience such preventable losses again.
Yeah storing your seed phrases on digital storage will only make your seed phrase to be a target to hackers, which can also lead to loss of funds , one just have to be conscious cautious with he or her seed phrases now what my friend can do is to prevent such from happening while hoping for the phone to give him one more chance to just copy out the important stuff before the phone is gone for good , now is planning to get a new one it was because of the coin in that faulty device that’s why his still ways to fix it but if the data is going to wipe there’s no need for him to fix it .