Hello,
My 6S unfortunately fell into the toilet! Embarrassing, I know... I have a ton of baby pictures on this thing, how can I get this repaired? I'm asking here because the "genius" at the Apple Store an hour from my house told me there was no hope, and this phone cannot by fixed at all! Do any of you know of a way to get these pictures???
Thanks,
Peter
This is a technical support forum sponsored by Apple. We can't discuss gray or black market repair services.
There may be one out there that can help you, but be prepared to pay at minimum $300 or so with no guarantee of recovering anything at all. Also beware of those who claim otherwise. Several of the most vocal 3rd party repair operations have recently been "busted"... having large shipments of illegal counterfeit parts intercepted by Homeland Security. Not exactly a good sign when it comes to how far they can be trusted.
Apple will NOT repair a liquid damaged phone. The only option they will offer is out of warranty replacement.
Apple does not offer data recovery services.
If you had iCloud backups enabled, and had sufficient storage available in iCloud, your phone should have been backing up on a daily basis when connected to WiFi and a power source. Your photos may be backed up and you just don't know it.
If that's the case you can just get the phone replaced and restore the iCloud backup.
This is a technical support forum sponsored by Apple. We can't discuss gray or black market repair services.
There may be one out there that can help you, but be prepared to pay at minimum $300 or so with no guarantee of recovering anything at all. Also beware of those who claim otherwise. Several of the most vocal 3rd party repair operations have recently been "busted"... having large shipments of illegal counterfeit parts intercepted by Homeland Security. Not exactly a good sign when it comes to how far they can be trusted.
Apple will NOT repair a liquid damaged phone. The only option they will offer is out of warranty replacement.
Apple does not offer data recovery services.
If you had iCloud backups enabled, and had sufficient storage available in iCloud, your phone should have been backing up on a daily basis when connected to WiFi and a power source. Your photos may be backed up and you just don't know it.
If that's the case you can just get the phone replaced and restore the iCloud backup.
Yes, a wet 6S can often be recoverable for data. Find someone who specializes in iPhone logic board repair who can troubleshoot the underlying problems and get the phone to turn on again long enough to enter the passcode and make an iTunes backup.
Yes, a water damaged iPhone almost always needs to be replaced. If your photos are stored in iCloud you can retrieve them from another device by going to iCloud.com and logging in.
There are companies that do that kind of work. We can not advise you or recommend one.
Apple does not make parts available to the public or unauthorized repair centers.
You'll have to find one on your own.
Haha, they are known for doing less than good work. What about some sort of iPhone repair specialist, i.e. someone that does this all day long? There must be people who take on this type of work. For as many iPhones that are out there, I would imagine a fair number of them succumb to water damage and need to be fixed. Corrosion (at least on my old stereo from the 70s) can be dealt with using the proper cleaning solution/tools. The problem here is, the guts are so compact and tiny, I would be afraid to even attempt to crack it open. Perhaps someone on this user forum can point me in the right direction? Googling does not seem to help.
Well, I just went to lunch, saw a bunch of helpful emails come in, came back here and poof! All of the helpful technical posts were gone. I get the feeling Apple does not want me to get my phone repaired, how heartless. Anyway, KittenTim, thank you for that link. $299 for an out of warranty replacement is pretty steep compared to what I can find on websites like Swappa, Amazon etc. Still, I will probably need to seek the assistance of "insert non-Apple repair service here" to recover my pictures. Many thanks to the actually helpful users, sorry your posts got removed, but I will contact the people you recommended. I will not mention them here by name for fear of my own reply getting removed (this actually happened twice already).
The problem is that water damage causes corrosion to the internal parts. No one can "fix" that.
FWIW I wouldn't trust Geek Squad to fix my toaster.
Oh man, replaced... I was hoping to just get it fixed, will Geek Squad at Best Buy be able to open and fix the damage? I am using my wife's previous Samsung, which is fine for now, but I really want to get those pictures back, they are not backed up anywhere. Surely there is a way to retrieve them.
Good to know, this reminds me of how car repair used to work for a few years in the 80s. Mom and Pop garages couldn't get access to the latest tools and parts, and ended up sending away business to local dealerships. I think there was some sort of legal ruling against this, antitrust or something similar. If Apple does not make parts available, do these repair centers reverse engineer repair manuals, or are the parts just generic electronics components? (dating myself again, but this is how my old 70s stereo is, you can just use any old capacitor brand, as long as it's the right farad)
Oh sorry about that, I thought this was a community forum where knowledgeable young 'Apple Fans' could assist old geezers like me. My granbaby is very dear to me, I feel like a fool for not backing up the pictures somewhere else. Alas, that is the case. Maybe Apple will repair my 6S directly, is there some repair email address of phone number I can call? I am willing to pay whatever it takes, memories like these are irreplaceable. If we can send a man to the moon, surely the company that sold me a $500 phone can help get it fixed.
I would pay $1000 if it meant a chance to recover those pictures. What is a gray or black market? Never heard these terms before. I would trust what other people say on Angie's List or Yelp, most people are good hearted and their word can be trusted when it comes to repair related services. That's the only way I'll hire a plumber or electrician, I need to see what satisfied and unsatisfied customers have said. Apple themselves has no data recovery service? Wow, that seems like a missed opportunity, all this talk about minimum wage and creating jobs (not Steve haha), one would think a large multinational would want to help its customers when they are hurting (for the right price of course). Can you tell me more about this out of warranty replacement? The "genius" did not mention it. I don't trust the cloud, I used to email myself pictures but got behind on that.
An out of warranty replacement is just that. A replacement device for one that is not covered by the standard warranty.
You can find pricing information here: https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/service/pricing
That can't be discussed here.
I'm not sure I would trust those shops, I've worked at Mount Carmel College as a Systems Administrator for years and some of our students had issues using just anybody. You got to be careful.
I didn't think much of anything could be repaired on these.
[Link Edited by Host]
Water damaged 6S
