water damage phone

I have a iphone 7 plus I need to recover photos that fell in puddle

Posted on Apr 2, 2019 12:13 PM

Top-ranking reply

Level 1

14 points

Posted on Apr 7, 2019 8:18 AM

Rice isn't necessarily the best choice for drying a phone out. Rice is organic (that's why we eat it... It's full of organic nutrients that can be released when it gets wet). It's possible for rice to leech undesirable things back into the phone that could harm it.

My best advice is to use silica gel desiccant. Those are the little bags that are often packed with products that say "do not eat". You can get them from many online, office supply, and big box retailers, and they will absorb water without any risk of leeching organic compounds back into the phone, since they are completely inorganic in nature. Look at the package you get for instructions. Often you can "regenerate" silica gel desiccant by baking it, which drives off any moisture in it, and allows it to be reused to absorb more.

If you can absorb moisture out, without introducing extra organic compounds, you MIGHT be able to dry it out with little to no corrosion, and it MIGHT come back to life (of course, it also might not).

This is gonna sound a bit nuts, but if you had your phone drop into dirty, nasty water, it can actually help to wash it out with cleaner water to get rid of the nasty crud inside. It's actually better to wash out filth from a wet phone before you dry it... I mean, it was already wet anyway, and you're already gonna replace it, whether you get your data off it or not. If you can find a place that has Deionized Water, use that. It's so pure that it's mineral free, and doesn't hardly even conduct electricity. Distilled water is not necessarily the same as DI water. Always ask the filtration shop.

The goal, of course, is to get the phone to dry out, while minimizing the chances for corrosion. If you succeed, you MIGHT be able to power it on again. If you achieve that, then DO NOT RESTORE, boot, securely log in, and copy your data off of the phone as fast as you can. I would NOT rely on the phone to have a very long life after a dunk, so look into your next phone after you save your data off the old one. Of course, it's always a gamble. There is no possibility to guarantee it'll ever power up again, but you can always try. If it does power up, you have a chance at recovering your data.

You can refer to Apple's support for their policy on data recovery

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202004

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66 replies

RanyS

Level 1

8 points

Apr 3, 2019 1:19 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

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.

james1231

Level 2

339 points

Apr 3, 2019 10:52 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

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]

deggie

Level 10

167,525 points

Apr 3, 2019 11:36 AM in response to jmfinnie

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.

Limnos

Level 10

427,151 points

Apr 2, 2019 10:51 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Lawrence Finch 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?

Apr 3, 2019 11:36 AM in response to JimmyCMPIT

I dont know of an instance where that wouldn't void your warranty.

geohd5

Level 1

4 points

Apr 5, 2019 6:53 PM in response to Kristyanna1019

If you bring your iPhone to a local repair center, they have a good possibility of helping you repair the phone for it to power on and recover your pictures using iTunes.

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water damage phone