A very good friend of mine dropped her iphone into water and now it is not working.Her husband recently passed away and text messages from him and from well wishers after his decease are feared lost. Is there any way to retrieve them?

If she has backed up her iPhone she can replace that iPhone and set up the new iPhone from her backup.

You can put the iPhone that went into water into a plastic baggie with either new silica gel packets (preferred) or raw rice and let it sit for 4 - 5 days. After that time remove the phone and connect it to power for at least a half hour. While it is still connected to power reset it by holding down the power and hold button, wait for the Apple logo then let go of the buttons. Might take several tries. If it revives immediately back it up.

If she can revive the phone you might also want to look into an application called TouchCopy or Phoneview (Mac only). It will let her move all of the messages to her computer so that she can format and print them. Just got through doing this for voice mails for a friend whose father recently died.

PhoneView will also retrieve messages/voicemails from an iTunes backup, if the phone was ever backed up on her computer.

Matt

And thank you Matt for mentioning this feature, I hadn't upgraded (or used) Phoneview for awhile and didn't realize this feature had been added. Much obliged.