I just watched a longish video of de la Rionda and O'Mara taking turns questioning one of de la Rionda's IT guys, Ben Kruidbos, in a pretrial hearing. I learned that the prosecution generated a report on the contents of Martin's phone in March 2012, but allowed Zimmerman's defense to think that the contents could not be retrieved. O'Mara and West only discovered that the phone worked in August. (If I remember correctly--from another source--the defense saw the phone sitting on a desk and turned it on or something and found it was operational.) They received the report the next month.
That report, as I understand it, didn't include deleted files. Kruidbos, it seems, eventually did an analysis which included deleted files. It turned out to be 30 times larger than the the original analysis. The new analysis included such things as a text about buying a gun, a photo of the hand of an African-American hand holding a gun, a gun on a bed, a marijuana plant, Martin smoking something or other, etc. When Kruidbos presented the new report, de la Rionda said that he was going to turn over the unreadable binary file to the defense. Deciphering it would require expensive specialized software, hamstringing the defense. Kruidbos became concerned that he himself would be in legal jeopardy. He got a lawyer and together they contacted the defense. (That's interesting. Like someone would make him the scapegoat if it ever came out. Hm.)
de la Rionda's questioning was pretty animated. He demanded to know if Kruidbos was accusing him of deleting the files or of doing something wrong. I'm not sure that this helped de la Rionda very much. Kruidbos said "no," but I was left wondering. Eventually dlR calmed down somewhat.
I'm a little confused because I was under the impression that Tracy Martin, Trayvon's dad, had discovered Diamond Eugene by looking at Trayvon's phone. If so, how could anyone get the idea it wasn't working?
Kruidbos was fired after the trial. He sued Angela Corey for $5 million. It seems like the suit was ongoing as of 2017 or 2018.