With water damage, you have to decontaminate the logic board before doing anything else, otherwise there will be latent issues down the road, as you saw in this instance.
Rice is a persistent myth, one that should be eliminated from the vernacular :>)
The water is inside the phone, on the logic board and under the shields, even under the IC's. The rice is nowhere near where the water is. So while it “may’’ soak up some water vapour, the real problem is the mineral deposits that can cause short circuits or the corrosion that is taking place as the water evaporates. Leaving the power on the device accelerates the process. The longer you let a phone sit in rice, the more time you are giving corrosion to damage your logic board. The saltier or harder the water is, the more damage will occur. The water needs to be displaced, not evaporated.
On some phones, rice treatments appear to work. But those are phones that had minimal water ingress and not anywhere near a danger area on the logic board. They would have recovered regardless of the intervention.
The proper way treat a wet phone is to do the following:
- Open your phone and remove the logic board (follow this guide)
- Inspect the logic board, especially around the connectors and look for corrosion.
- Inspect both sides of the board. Unfortunately, most of the board is covered in shields. That's usually where the damage is occurring.
- Put your board in a container with >90% isopropyl alcohol and let it sit for a while.
- Use a soft brush, like a toothbrush and lightly brush away any corrosion you see.
- Rinse in alcohol and repeat.
- Let it air dry for a day.
- Re-assemble and hope for the best.
You should also replace the battery if it has swollen. Resist the temptation to pop it to let the gas out. A compromised Li-ion battery is a fire hazard. If the device appears to power up but behaves erratically, then use a tool like 3uTools to flash the firmware as it may be corrupted. In your case specifically, if you want to rule out “peripherals” as opposed to the logic board, connect just the battery and Lightning Port to the logic board and connect it to iTunes. If the board works, at least minimally, then iTunes will see the phone. However the problem here is that you don’t know if the battery or Lightning port is good.
A professional repair shop that does water damage repair may be able to recover your phone or the data because they have access to pro-level ultrasonic baths and specialized cleaners as well as the skills to troubleshoot your board. Many shops have a no fix/no fee policy so you don't have to spend money to find out if the phone is fixable or not.
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