Getting pictures off of old deactivated phone Can I hook up my old Galaxy S2 phone via USB to my laptop to find "lost" pictures in an unnamed file?  I just activated my new Galaxy S4 and for some reason, all pics that were on my old phone are now gone from the new phone. Not sure why these would be deleted from the phone during a simple phone swap. Not all of my pics are on the sd card. Most of them were saved to the phone because it had much more space available.

Customer service says it may take up to 24 hours for the transfer to be complete but the new phone already has all contacts &amp; accounts transferred, plus I'm able to text &amp; receive calls. I understand that during a transfer, pics are not usually included. But they should still be saved inside the old phone, right? The techs doing the swap shouldn't be able to do a factory reset or anything on the old phone, correct?
From your message I understand that you gave your old phone to a technician who did the transfer to your new Galaxy S4 for you. A phone swap is not necessarily a simple procedure and it all depends on what exactly the technician did. Apparently he moved all your accounts to the new device but like you I doubt that he moved all the files to the new device.

That being said, the pictures on your old phone will most likely still be there so there is nothing preventing you to connect your old phone to a computer and just copy those files to your computer or your new device. To confirm that the pictures are still there you can turn on the old phone and see if you can still see them. A deactivated phone only loses the actual mobile network connection but it should still be fully functional, even data with wifi.

And for your last question nothing is preventing anyone with your phone in their hands from factory resetting it. But I don't see any reason that would justify why a technician would do that after a phone swap.