water damage phone

As long as there is still power in the battery, some parts of the board are still supplied with power. They don't try to draw from it, but it reaches "their gate."

The good thing is, batteries have a control board and if the output is shorted due to liquid, the board may shut down supply.

However, if it does not, you now have on the board many types of conductive metals and power running through them causing hydrolysis (and corrosion) and causing solder joints to therefore break, and possibly corrosion (or water itself) will be bridging power rails (or lines) together. So suddenly you have 4V from the battery going into a line for the CPU that should not exceed 1V. That would burn transistors inside the CPU and kill it partially or totally. This is true for any electronic board, not just Apple iPhones or Macs. And this is why it is preferable to first turn it off, and second try to disconnect all forms of power if possible (when for example you have a user removable battery). Then proceed to clean and assess.

I am trying to picture this. The digital photos fell into a puddle? They slid off the screen and onto the ground?

If the device won't start and the photos had not transferred to iCloud (if you were using iCloud Photo Library) or you did not have it backed up then the content is gone. Welcome to the age of electronics.

I come across this very often and yes most lightlly your data can be saved.

1. first thing to do (if possible) is remove battery and power off the device

DO NOT try to turn it on or plug to charger/computer this might make things worse

2.find a dry place / warm and let the phone dry there untill you can get it to service.

DO NOT put in rice (this is a myth and doesnt help) ,DO NOT put in Microwave ( this will destroy your device)

3 as soon as you can (Time is important to success rate) take your device to repair shop that can handle water damage and data recovery.

This is advice coming from someone that actually does this work all the time and plenty of experience.

Good Luck getting your data back !

For future reference, even on an iPhone you can use a service from Google called "Google Photos which gives you free, unlimited storage for your photos - automatically backed up from your pho e as you take them. This is very handy should the worst happen.

In your current situation, yes, it is very possible, and even PROBABLE, that all your photos can be recovered. There are many ruputabke services across the world who offer this service. As yet, Apple don't officially offer this service, so you do need to venture outside of their official network. Just because Apple themselves don't offer it, doesn't mean it isn't possible.

Apple doesn't really offer data recover services... It's possible, but they don't permit open discussion of any alternative options here. This clearly isn't the place to look for those kinds of answers.

Hi!

Sorry to hear about your phone falling into a puddle.

If you would like to recover your photos from your phone, you have a few options.

1. If your phone still works, I recommend you plug it into a computer and back it up via iTunes or go into your iCloud settings, click “iCloud Back Up” and press “Back Up” your photos will be safe on the cloud.
2. If your phone is affected by water damage and won’t turn on, I recommend you go to your nearest Apple Store and set up a Genius Bar Appointment. There, they will be able to fix your phone.
3. Your photos might already be on the cloud! So no need to worry about your phone.

I hope this helped you, and good luck on getting back your photos!

SiriIsMyGirlfriend1 wrote:

Does the iPhone turn on?

Ah, well, the advice if your phone gets wet is to turn if off IMMEDIATELY before the water can short something out. And don't turn it on until it has dried out completely (meaning after several days to a week). So it's a bad idea to see if it turns on.

Hi

When you get your iPhone replaced if you had iCloud backup on just use the same apple I'd & password to get your photos & data back.

Make an appointment at Apple store For a iPhone replacement you will need to pay half of the cost of a new iPhone.

Cheers

Brian

Well lucky you. You managed to get them off a device that would not start, as was prefaced in my reply? The device was sitting there not powered on and you recovered them? Those were my conditions in the response.

Kristyanna1019 wrote:

the phone fell in the puddle, Duh!

Yes, and what I said in the very first reply was if it would not turn on then you could not recover anything unless it was from a backup. I did not say it was impossible to recover the phone contents because all you said was it was dropped in a puddle, nothing about its operating condition afterward and I wasn't ready to start going on about 'well if this then that, and if this then that, and if this then that'.

Oh, don't do the rice thing. Let it sit for several days before turning it on.

If it will turn on then there's a very good chance you can recover things, though water damage can have a delayed effect so you'd better do backups sooner. You never can tell. We have an iPhone 5S that fell into several inches of water for a few seconds two years ago and is still going strong, but people have also posted here about iPhones getting splattered with water and being toast.

Limnos wrote:

If you turn the phone OFF then nothing will draw power from the battery.

I'm guessing there will be some minimal power draw to keep the clock running?

when I talked my wife into getting an 8 to replace her 4s I turned the 4s off with a 50% charge. 3 months later it was still 50%. So it must be very minimal.

Lawrence Finch, you are correct that the power draw is very minimal when the phone is not booted and in the off state during normal condition. However, there is still battery voltage on one of the power rails. The importance of disconnecting the battery of a water damage phone is that as long as there is voltage present there can be short circuits due to water. This results in a massive current draw and power draw that can overload and kill electrical components on logic boards.

It is likely that customers don’t have the tools to open their phone to disconnect the battery so first suggestion is definitely to turn the phone off *****.

Here to help :)

[Edited by Host]

I think you mean the photo stored on your, now dead, iphone right ?

If you didn't have icloud enabled then as a user you CANNOT recover your photos, neighter can any Apple store!

If you did have icloud enabled, but did not have wifi or mobile data at hand, only the photos you made during your offline time are gone.

If you were unlucky and only had some verry important fotos stored on your iphone, then you could search for a data recovery service. This is not going to be cheap and you always have a chance of not recovering anything.

Unfortunatly, I have no personal experience, nor do I personaly know someone who did, so please take my advice as is.

I only watch youtube video's and try to use my brain doing so.

Iphone data recovery is a LOT cheaper than hard drive data recovery. It's also cheaper than a replacement phone. Unless the storage or encryptioned chips are damaged it's an easy but time consuming process.

If they have AppleCare+ then it used one of their 2 accidental damage incidents.

If they don't but were in warranty they can do an out-of-warranty replacement. Even if they were out of warranty they could do an out-of-warranty replacement.

If the photos they want to save are really that precious to them they can find a reputable 3rd party repair site (not a trivial task), maybe get there photos back and buy a new phone. Apparently at some sites they may be without their phone for several months so they will need to buy a new phone in the meantime. Of course in today's world if they were wedding photos they could just get copies from one of the 50 other people that took them or buy some from the professional photographer.

They should also learn about streaming photos and backups.