Phone was in my pocket; I was pushed into a swimming pool. I got out of the water within 30 secs.
Looked at screen of phone said something in ref to sim error?
Tried the rice in a bag w/some silica pouches from all my vitamin containers in a ziplock freezer size bag in the sun and plugged in to charger as well; for over 78 hours.
Zero sign of life!
Help?! What next?!
Is this a good question?
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Brett, the very first thing you want to do is to not try to restart the phone. This may further damage your phone. The next thing to do is to clean it. Disassemble your phone using this guide. Then clean it with +90% isopropyl alcohol. Follow this guide, and even so it was written for a 3G all the points are still pertinent to your phone. While you clean your board, check for any obvious damage, like burned or missing components etc. When it is properly cleaned, replace the battery. All these steps are to avoid delayed failure caused by corrosion. Once all this is done, reassemble your phone and reevaluate. Hope this helps, good luck.
Guide
Difficulty:
Difficult
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1 - 2 hours
Guide
Difficulty:
Moderate
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1 - 2 hours
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Thanks for the advice
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I will refrain from beating a dead horse about how important it is to not plug it in---oops.
In my experience, there are two ways that water damages components. 1.) corrosion. 2.) oxidation. This is just my observation. Corrosion is the green stuff, and yes isopropanol will get that off. When a phone has had current pumped through it before cleaning, you often end up with a lot of oxidation--your silver solder becomes tarnished and black---this can damage components, mostly by crudding up their connections to the board. This stuff can't be cleaned off---the only real solution for oxidation is to reflow the solder.
Sometimes a phone can be completely dead, but only requires a little reflow of a few connections and everything is fine. Other times, the phone has oxidation throughout and is just not feasible to repair.
Here are some example pics of a phone I got today---same story as yours, useless rice and then attempting to charge = dead phone.
First pic: After "rice treatment"
Second pic: After ultrasonic cleaning, and lots of brushing with alcohol. Notice the black oxidation that will likely prevent this connector from functioning
Third pic: After reflowing the oxidation-induced cold solder joints on the connector. This connector now works as designed.
At the end of the day, this phone is now flawless after water damage, but she was lucky--she got the phone sent in within 1 day and there were only a couple of spots like this. Many times the oxidation is really all over the place and it is just too much.
good luck with your repair!
jessa
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I would say your chances are very low since it has been plugged it but I would open the phone up.
Scrub off any corrosion that is on the board with isopropyl alcohol
Let the board dry for 12-36 hours and try replacing the battery!
Hope this helps!
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You should not have plugged it in, you NEVER plug in a phone until after it's been cleaned following immersion in water. Also, leaving it in rice, should be a minimum of 7-10 days. From here, like was already stated, go with the alcohol and a new battery and hope for the best.
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tellitlikeitis , "Also, leaving it in rice, should be a minimum of 7-10 days." absolutely a myth. Placing any device in Rice after water submersion is the same as doing nothing. It will not prevent corrosion, nor will it clean a circuit board. It is totally useless. Please revisit your answer in that respect.
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2 Comments
Is there a way to fix this myself before bringing it back to Apple?
by Brett
Thanks.
I just purchased an iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit from Radio Shack . I just have to find 99.9 % isopropyl and a battery. Hopefully that will do it.
by Brett