Water damaged iPhone repair is a complicated task and not every other phone repair lab will be able to help you with it. In this article, we’ll be telling you about the steps you can take yourself to fix your water damaged iPhone.
How to Rescue your drowned phone:
As far as I know there hasn’t been a study to confirm this, but I’m pretty sure water damage is the leading cause of panic among smartphone users worldwide. One minute, you’re having a great day, and the next, your phone is sitting at the bottom of the toilet and your world comes crashing down.
All those photos of your cute baby… So what do you do when you accidentally spill your grande latte all over your screen? Is there any way to rescue a drowned phone? Sometimes. Maybe. If you act quickly.
The biggest problem is that most water contains ions that make it conductive, which means it can mess up where power is being routed in your phone and short-circuit essential components. In a short circuit, there’s a connection being made that allows a quicker, easier path for current to flow. That can fry some parts, since they aren’t designed to handle that kind of jolt. And it can quickly drain your battery in a way that can cause long-term damage.
So if your phone is wet and it’s still on, the first thing you should do is turn it off. That way, at least you’re not actively sending a current through all that circuitry. And if the screen went black, resist the urge to turn it on to see if it’s still working. Once your phone is off, you’ll want to use a cloth to dry as much of the water as you can. Letting the water dry naturally isn’t a good plan, because it can react with parts of the phone and cause corrosion, which wears away the components and can cause permanent short circuits and irreversible damage.
Plus, the longer the phone is wet, the more time the water has to seep into it and get to the most sensitive electronics. If your phone was truly soaked through, odds are you’ve already got water in places you can’t reach. You’ll need to make sure all of that water has dried, too, before you turn it back on. That’s why you might have heard people suggest putting your wet phone in a container of uncooked rice for a day or so.
The idea is that dry rice grains are a desiccant they attract and absorb water. Leave a container of rice open in a humid environment for a while and you’ll see what I mean. Just maybe don’t eat it afterward. When you put your phone in a tightly sealed container with rice, you’re hoping that the rice will pull the moisture from the trapped air, allowing the water in your phone to evaporate more quickly and leaving you with a nice, dry phone. Some people swear by this, and rice-drying is definitely better than blow-drying your phone.
The hot air might get rid of the water, but heat generally isn’t very good for electronics. Rice isn’t the best desiccant around, though. It’s just convenient because most people already have some in their house. There are lots of other substances that are much better at wicking moisture, like the little silica packets that say “Do Not Eat” on them, or even cat litter.
So if your phone tends to get a lot of unscheduled baths, you might want to hoard all those little silica packets and put them in an airtight container for a rainy day. But even with the best desiccant, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to rescue your phone if the water has done its worst. So if this does happen to you a lot, you might just want to invest in a waterproof phone or case.
Fixing a wet iPhone:
So you got your iPhone wet, stop worrying. I fixed mine a few days ago, it was completely dunked and it’s fixed now and it works perfect. You don’t have to go get a new one right away, take your time, take a deep breath and listen to my advice about what I went through.
I went out ice fishing, it fell through the ice. I was filming us catching the fish and changed locations. That’s when I fell through the ice in about 15 feet of water. I had my iPhone in my sweatshirt’s front pocket. I swam with it for probably I would say at least 30 seconds before I pulled myself out. So my iPhone got good and soaked.
It was really wet. I thought it was ruined. I came in dried myself. I pulled it out and I turned it on. It worked for about a minute and then the screen went blank. I got nothing and I couldn’t get it to do anything after that. So I freaked out, I thought I’m going to have to pay for another iPhone and we all know how expensive that is.
Well stop right where you are don’t pay for a new one until you at least try these things that I tried that worked for me very well.
If you’re into technical work, you need to find a tutorial that tells you how to take apart an iPhone. Now, to do this you’re going to need a screwdriver, it’s a five-point screwdriver that you order online. They sell kits for it and these kits don’t cost more than $10. There’s two small screws right down your iPhone that you need to take apart. I didn’t do that because I was too scared.
I thought to myself that I’m not an iPhone professor and I surely can’t fix an iPhone. I didn’t want to break it or mess it up even worse than it was. So I never opened my iPhone up.
Now the other ways I’m going to tell you to do it without even opening it. If you do open your iPhone up, however, and you’ve taken the time to get the kit and let it dry out. I would suggest taking out the battery, take everything out and just let it sit somewhere until it dries out.
One thing I found out during this process is that you should not put your iPhone to a heat source. Don’t use a blow dryer or anything. Just use a plain old fan or some kind of blower to dry it off if you’re going to do that.
The second way of drying it without taking it apart is to use a vacuum cleaner. You take a vacuum cleaner just like got your attachments you can use the circular end and to dry it. Hold it at a little distance to the jack port at the bottom of your iPhone. Be patient because you’ve got to do it for about ten minutes and then do it again from the upper side earphone jack.
I used the dry out method of a bag of rice as well as something that you can get in every hardware store here in America, probably anywhere else too but it is a product called “damp rid”. You take your iPhone and I suggest using the vacuum cleaner on it first, and do not plug it in.
Remember don’t plug it in because that would make current flow a wet circuit and the connections can be completely ruined and you’ll end up ruining your iPhone even further.
I put my iPhone into the bag of rice and then left the bag open and then put the damp rig that I bought into the bag itself. It comes with a hanger for your closet because it usually used to keep moisture of clothes but I just put it in a bag.
I put the rice inside one bag and then my iPhone in the same bag. After that, I took another bag and sealed up all three things the damp rig, the rice and the iPhone. Now I checked it in 12 hours and all of a sudden it showed me the downloading icon in the middle of the screen you get when you turn your iPhone on and then it went off.
So I said all right it’s probably not done I put it back in the bag for another 12 hours and my iPhone came on. I was amazed that it came on however it read that the battery would not charge at all. It read zero on the battery so I put it in there again I in the bag for another 12 hours. After I did that, I saw that my battery was charged to 30%.
Now this took a total of 36 hours. Initially, it only charged up to like 30, 40 percent and it wasn’t getting a full charge but it would work. So I put it in again and once I got it up to a hundred, I was really impressed. Rice and the damp rig together pulled the water out of the iPhone for me and it dried it out.
You do have to go back into iTunes and you have to download all your stuff again because it’s probably going to be wiped out like a factory reset.
Hopefully if not if it’s your first time with a reset. Start over like it’s a brand new iPhone but it really does work.
Don’t go and get rid of your iPhone just because you got it wet and one of the little stickers in there is half pink. That makes your warranty automatically void so you don’t have a lot of options left. After I carried out the drying procedure myself, my iPhone has been working well for two months. I’ve been doing everything I did before, I make videos with it, I do everything that I have to do with my iPhone that I did before and it works great.
So those are my suggestions to you people. I also read online that you can dip your iPhone in alcohol. I don’t recommend this and I don’t think that’s a good way to go. I don’t want to dip my iPhone into anything unless it’s an accident. So if you really want to try it, go ahead but dipping it in alcohol seems a little weird to me. I understand the purpose of the alcohol that sucks the moisture out of it and it’ll completely evaporate away but I’ve already been swimming with it.
I don’t want to do it again. So anyway, my method works. Just don’t panic and take your time. I probably should have just left it in there and not taking it out after every 12 hours but I did to try and make it work.
