Fix Your Stuff Community Store

Repair information and guides for the fifth generation of iPhone. Model: A1387

2193 Questions View all

Options

Repairing faults caused by water damage.

I dropped my phone in the loo 2 weeks ago. Did the rice trick and kept it in a room with my dehumidifier for some extra water sucking action.

Since then it's been a bit broken. The charger works but my battery is short circuited as it only works when plugged in. I know this would need replacing. But my signal has gone and I cannot connect to wifi or use my Bluetooth. I've bought a replacement phone as I was about to upgrade anyway but I wanted to know if it's cheap to repair so I can give it to my mum.

Does anyone have and idea what part I would need to replace to get the signal and wifi working again? The phone switches on and operates normally so I'm sure the logic board is fine. I just want to know what parts I need and how to guides to find to try and fix it! I don't want to go to a repair guy as I want to do it cheap (and quite like the idea of challenging myself to fix it!)

Any help and advise would be amazing! Thanks in advance

Nikki

Answer this question I have this problem too

Is this a good question?

Yes No
Score -1
Add a comment

3 Answers

Filter by:
Most Helpful Newest Oldest
Most Helpful Answer

Options

Nikki Jospeh, first off "Did the rice trick and kept it in a room with my dehumidifier for some extra water sucking action." is not a good trick. There is no water sucking, just evaporation which will cause further corrosion. There is no validity to use rice as a desiccant by itself. Using rice is the same as doing nothing. Secondly, what you want to do is to prevent corrosion failure. Totally disassemble your phone. using these guides for that. Then clean it with +90% isopropyl alcohol. This will displace the water and stop corrosion. It it okay to submerge a board in isopropyl alcohol. Check this guide to show you how to do it. Do not forget to clean the connectors on the board as well as the cables. Check your board for any missing or damaged component. After that, air dry all the components. Then re-assemble with a new battery This is not optional but a must, to avoid failure later on. " Water damage is the toughest to trouble shoot and to repair. Once you have it properly cleaned, replaced the battery and checked all the components, you could try to reflow your WiFi IC to see if it will make a difference. Be careful with the reflow attempt so that you do not melt your logic board components or desolder them. Hope this helps, good luck.

Was this answer helpful?

Yes No
Score 2
Add a comment

Options

Hello Nikki, water damage is a tricky thing. While I've never dealt with Wifi/Bluetooth not working due to water damage, I have fixed phones with the same problem.

The fix is free, if you think it's worth the risk.

WARNING: This CAN destroy the entire phone if not done propperly. So do it at your own risk!

Dissasemble the motherboard from the phone. Locate the Wifi/Bluetooth chip show in the following picture. (http://thumbs2.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/m...)

Remove the tape/protection over the chip. (I honestly don't remember if it was metal or a black tape piece)

Heat the chip as much as you dare with a heat gun. (It needs to get hot. Like, really hot.)

Let it sit for 10minutes before reinstalling it.

Vwala.

Why this works? I have no idea. But it does!

But, like I said, your phone is different from the ones I've fixed as yours is water damage and it's a VERY risky thing to do, as you could easily heat the chip/surrounding parts too much.

There are a few youtube videos/etc which I learned this trick from. Replacing the chip requires soldering and, of course, a new chip. And I have no idea if it's possible to buy a new wifi/bluetooth chip at a decent price. I also have no knowledge in soldering.. But so far this trick has worked for me on three different Iphone 4s.

Also, I would like to mention that the rice trick is basically a myth, it doesn't really help. You should always clean a water damaged phone with alcohal (90%+)(In Swedish it's called Isopropylakohol, not sure if the name is universal) and a soft brush.

Goodluck!

Was this answer helpful?

Yes No
Score 1

2 Comments:

The reason why heating the chip works is that you are resetting/remelting the solder points underneath the chip (this works in the case of a bad connection due to a dry solder crack). Referred to as a Reflow. If you want to do a more indepth kind of this fix (reballing) you have to take the chip off the board (heat it up to around 217 degrees celcius) , clean away the remaining solder and re apply solder balls or solder paste, put chip back on the board and remelt the solder to form a new connection. The more you know :)

The method with the heat gun though it very crude and you would be better off using a reflow station for this process as you can regulate temperatures.

by

Hey AngryLemur, thanks for enlightening me on why it works! :) The mroe you know indeed!

And I agree, the method is VERY crude. Hence my several warnings. I sadly do not have acecss to a reflow station, so I use the smallest heat gun I have available to me.

May have to ask bossman for some new equipment.... :D

by

Add a comment

Options

"The phone switches on and operates normally so I'm sure the logic board is fine."

---I wouldn't be so sure. What we know for sure is that your water damaged phone was never cleaned and has multiple failures---this means you have corrosion on the board, and it will get worse over time.

The "poor man's reflow" described above is likely to help a drop damage phone, but not a water damaged phone. The concept is that after a drop, a solder ball somewhere on the phone has dislodged and is shorting an adjacent component. By heating the board to the temperature to make ALL the solder a little melty, and the displaced solder ball finds its way back into its correct spot.

With water damage, your problem is corrosion. After a board has been cleaned and scrubbed as best you can, if there is still a problem, then there is no similar method that can repair corrosion damaged components. You'd have to actually repair, which means board-level soldering on a microscale.

good luck, keep us posted on your repair

jessa

Was this answer helpful?

Yes No
Score 0

1 Comment:

I was really hoping it was going to be a "the antenna just need replacing" situation and I guess I won't really know the damage caused until I open it up. I really want to liquapel my new phone my new phone since I'm quite clumsy but there's no one in the uk who does it! I shall open it up sometime this week and see if anything obvious have been knocked out of place. Hopefully it will be something obvious and I can come back to you lovely lot for extra advice.

by

Add a comment

Add your answer

Nikki joseph will be eternally grateful.
View Statistics:

Past 24 Hours: 0

Past 7 Days: 0

Past 30 Days: 0

All Time: 1,494