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My phone got wet and now it won't charge and there is black stuff coming out?

I dropped my iPhone 6 in the toilet and got it out in like five seconds, and it was working fine for a while, so I didn't do anything, thinking it was fine. I was charging it and then after like ten minutes of charging it stopped working, so I took out the charging cord, and there was this weird black stuff on it that I almost thought was fluff until I touched it and it was like grease? The greasy stuff isn't oozing out or anything, it's just when I put in the charging cord and take it out there's this black stuff on it. I don't know what it is and some places are telling me it's battery acid, but none of their descriptions quite fit what happened to my phone, so I don't know, and it didn't hurt or anything when I touched it. There was just a little bit. Please help!

iPhone 6, It could be a six plus I'm not sure

Posted on Oct 20, 2018 6:59 PM

Reply
7 replies

Oct 20, 2018 7:59 PM in response to gfeltovich

Hey there, I'm sorry this happened to you.
Let's be practical. What is coming out of your phone is likely just wet pocket lint that is common to every iPhone 6 charge port. The charge port itself is pretty isolated from the inside of the phone, and it commonly fills up with pocket lint, sawdust, grass clippings, cat hair etc. I can understand that you're concerned that you might have battery acid or something dangerous building up in your phone that is squeezing out the charge port---but there really isn't a mechanism for anything like that. There is no battery acid in an iPhone 6.


What happens to an iPhone 6 with your history is that a drop of conductive water will penetrate the housing, and roll around for awhile until it slips under the logic board and finds its way to C5202_RF--a well known capacitor on the main power rail. Once that happens, the water damages the capacitor so that it become a wire to ground. Quickly after, your entire battery voltage will dump to ground and the phone may get hot briefly. After that--your phone is dead unless you find a repair shop willing to troubleshoot your logic board to relieve the short (most will not work on water damaged boards since they can be very open-ended). From experience looking at thousands of water damaged iPhone 6, if we opened your phone we'd see some corrosion on the logic board, a dead battery, and some drops of wetness. If data recovery is important, then the chance of getting this phone to boot for data is very high. But to be a phone again---you're probably out of luck.


The Apple Store will accept any water damaged phone for out of warranty discount--and sell you a refurbished iPhone 6 for less than the cost of a new one.

Oct 21, 2018 1:56 AM in response to love174

Thank you so much! This is honestly the only thing that made any sense to me, and also the least extreme/stressful response. I hate getting drop-everything-and-run responses on things cause it just makes me panic and that’s no good for anybody.


My phone has been working completely normally and also charging fine (I figured out it was just the charging cord) for around 10 hours, do you think I still need to take it in to the Apple repair place?

Oct 21, 2018 9:25 AM in response to gfeltovich

When an iPhone 6 hits water, one of two things can happen.

One--Water doesn't penetrate into the phone, or if it does it rolls around on the battery side of the phone and eventually dries up.

Two--water finds it way to the logic board where now electricity and water combine. From there, it can corrode components, rot connections under chips, and eventually cause a short circuit that makes the phone stop working all together, or lose some functions.


In general it is never a good idea to plug a phone in that has been wet until it has been cleaned. Water isn't the problem, ELECTRICITY plus water is. If you are in category one to begin with, you want to stay in category one! The easiest way to do that is open the phone up, disconnect the battery and clean up any water and mild corrosion before it has a chance to become a problem. The Apple Store will not do any service on a water damaged phone, and many repair places will not either---no one wants to open up your phone, see that some component is held on by spit, clean it and then have it fall off and your phone stops working---then you will point a finger at them and say "You broke my phone!"


You might be able to find a shop that has good reviews (there are a lot of bad shops out there, like any service industry) that is willing to open your phone and see what they can do to clean it. Keep in mind that 80% of the logic board is under soldered-on metal shields. The labor to desolder the shields and to check out and clean under there is pretty extensive, so most "water damage cleaning service, no warranty" are just going to spot clean the edges of the logic board.


If this had just happened a few minutes ago and you hadn't yet plugged the phone in, then yes--go to someone who can open your phone and dry it out. At this point, I think you're just playing roulette and hopefully you'll get lucky!

My phone got wet and now it won't charge and there is black stuff coming out?

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