iPhone 12 crashed after screen replaced but still recognised by computer - how to restore?

Hi everyone,

My iPhone 12 (iOS15.5) had a cracked screen and I went for the inexpensive non-Apple screen replacement. The phone crashed and it looks like it’s had a hard wipe - my computer “sees” it as being new, empty.

What worse is that I thought I had it on automatic back up, and I didn’t.

So I’m about to try a restore app - several of the free versions can find a lot of my data still on the hard drive of the phone, but they can’t find any messages at all.

Is there any way I can retrieve those messages? They were never deleted, it’s just the phone crashed so hard.

Thanks for whatever help you can provide!