How to recover photos from an iPhone 3G?

I used an iPhone 3G from May of 2009 until around the spring of 2013, at which time I upgraded to the iPhone 5. I've always been a prolific iPhotographer :) and recently pulled around 12,000 photos off my iPhone 5 for backup and to free up disk space. I've kept the old iPhone 3G, though, and suspect it has thousands of pictures on it that need to be removed from the phone and backed up on my cloud, my laptop, and an external hard drive. However, Apple no longer makes available the OSX that supports and grants access to an iPhone 3G through iTunes. I can't hook it up to my laptop (Dell XPS 15Z, if it helps to know what I'm running, with Windows 7) and access the pictures to manually move them off the phone.

How do I recover pictures from an iPhone 3G? Is there anything that can be done?

Is there anything that can be done? As it is, I can't get my computer to even see the 3G, much less charge the phone through the computer or allow me to access the phone's drives and my pics. I'm currently charging the 3G via wall plug/USB, which I think will allow me to look at my photos on the phone itself once the phone is juiced up ... but I really just want to recover and transfer my images off the iPhone 3G for safekeeping.

_{I did search this site prior to posting and could not find my exact question. Please don't hesitate to VTC if I've accidentally submitted a duplicate.}

Solution 1:

Mac - iPhoto

Windows - Photo Gallery, part of Microsoft Essentials.

Both will offer to import photos from any connected iPhone

BTW, by default an iPhone will not appear as a device on the desktop, only in an app ready to 'talk' to it, iTunes, iPhoto etc.

Solution 2:

You should be able to plug any iPhone into a PC and (if the phone is generally working) it will show up as a storage device under My Computer.

On a Mac it may be a bit more problematic as you have to go through iTunes.

Perhaps you could tell us what errors show up on the Mac or PC when you plug your iPhone into your Mac or PC?

BTW I have never heard anyone refer to iPhone models as iPhone 1.0 or 5.0. For clarity and to avoid confusion if you refer to them as the model name that lowers the confusion level. Go into the iPhone, system settings -> General -> About, it will show the model number. Mine is MD640LL/A, Google that number and you will find the model you have...