Actually cell phones are a real pain to get deleted pix recovered unless they're saved to the SD card.
For a while, I used to rebuild cell phones back before the touch screens became the "phones to have" because they were simple to fix. I'd buy phones off of eBay that were broken.. i.e. broken screen.. and buy another of the same model with a bad battery or some other fault. Put the main board or screen from one on the other and Voila! a good phone. Put a good ESN on it and then flip it on eBay. I specialized on Verizon LG phones because those were the best to make a profit with. (Chocolate, Chocolate II, V, enV, enV2, Voyager, etc..)
Um.. I used to find all kinds of self-shot sexting pix all the time. The problem was, even though they were self shot.. it was easy to see that a lot of them were under age.. (which is why you won't catch me saving them let alone posting them anywhere!)
So.. for those who have a dead cell phone? Run over it with the car. .shoot it.. beat it to death with an axe.. but whatever you do, don't sell it on eBay! lol