Water Damage! iPhone 4S

On May 18, 2013:

Yesterday my cousin and I tipped our canoe while on a river. We had our electronics in a ziploc bag which included my iPhone 4S. We managed to save almost everything including the ziploc bag. We were stuck floating down the fast moving rapids for atleast 30 minutes keeping firm grip on everything. Once our fellow canoe group caught up with us we put everything in their canoe and made a pit stop. There we put the electronics out to dry (only a little bit of water got it). I managed to send one quick text out and tried hard to shut off the phone but it kept rebooting.

When we got back to my grandma's house I investigated the iPhone. It was on and working BUT the flash was stuck on and the power button didn't always work, water behind the lower part of the screen I tried hard to turn it off but it just kept rebooting. With no rice I just layed it out in the sun for an hour.

About 2 hours later we rushed to the mall and went to the Apple Store. They checked the status of the warranty and it just expired 5 days ago. Ugh.. So they just told us there was little they can do and they will replace it for $200.00. At this point I didn't want to give up. At the Apple Store the iPhone was having such a melt down. The Apple employee struggled to keep it on as it kept turning itself off (power button issue). Everything else was functional besides the back camera full of water vapour and LED light.

About 3 hours after that I got home I put the phone in rice. I noticed the phone some how got into recovery mode.

Over night and about 24 hours later I took the phone out of the rice plugged into iTunes on my iMac. It was just on recovery mode asking me to recover it on iTunes. It wouldn't work because it kept going into UNKNOWN ERROR 2001 and UNKNOWN ERROR 2006. I read somewhere a fix can be putting it from recovery mode into DFU mode. But remember the power button isn't still working so it is impossible to go into that mode. I think I got it once but still had the same errors.

I am not ready to give up. I know there is no such thing as minor water damage but it really does seem minor because everything was functional just the phone put itself into recovery mode with a messed up power button.

I'm asking what I should do now. I really don't want to spend $200 for another iPhone 4S when the next generation iPhone will come at what ever time. It seems pointless getting an old phone than a new one. I just want to be able to use this one until then.

Thanks for reading my rants.

Brady