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Fourth generation iPhone. Repair is straightforward, but the front glass and LCD must be replaced as a unit. GSM / 8, 16, or 32 GB capacity / Model A1332 / Black and White. This page aims to help users troubleshoot, fix, and seek help for the iPhone 4.

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iPhone 4 got wet, but works, screen dark

Iphone 4 was dropped in water. Did the bowl of rice, no joy.

Disassembled iPhone, cleaned corrosion from mother board, various connection points (there was some significant blooms of greenish corrosion in a few places.)

Reassembled iPhone does everything - - EXCEPT - - the screen is dark. It's receiving texts, it can answer calls, I can unlock the screen and hit the home button twice and then play a song (these are the operations I could hit in the dark.) When plugged into my Mac, it shows up normally in iTunes. I did a restore, a system upgrade to the current iOS 5.1. Everything is fine, except the screen is dark.

How can I tell if the problem is the LCD/display assembly? Could the problem be upstream of the display (motherboard? cabling? or...?)? I would like to be able to find out what I can before spending money on parts which I may not need.

Any sage advice would be greatly appreciated!!

Answer this question I have this problem too

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Same issue here, but with a 4s. Cleaned the mainboard, replaced the display. still showing very dark. This is an iPhone that was submerged for a while after a canoeing accident. Everything seems to work except the dark display.

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jjwhitney, since it does sound like you already cleaned the iPhone, we can skip the steps about cleaning it with high grade isopropyl alcohol :-) There is really no a surefire way to say which part is the one that gives you the problem. I would recommend that you start it systematically. Start with the easiest part, and that is the display, replace that. If your screen is absolutely black, with no faint images, I am certain that this is your problem. If it would have faint images, I would recommend to take a look at the backlight IC and coil on the logic board. That repair is a bit more difficult due to the fact that those are SMD components. Try the display first. Hope this helps, good luck.

UPDATE

Block Image

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Hi and thanks for taking the time to reply!!

Yes, I did scrub down pretty much everything with isopropyl (didn't have any but 70% solution available at the time which I hope isn't too great a compromise.)

I have since learned which connector is for the LCD and that particular one did display some corrosion when I had the iPhone disassembled. I hope that the connectors will still work with a new screen.

I am resigned to getting a new display assembly and will try my luck from there.

I think that we were lucky, as everything on the iPhone (as much as I can tell without having a screen) is working - - getting texts & phone calls, unlock screen, top button on/off, shutting down and booting-up, playing music and it interacts with iTunes normally. The battery charged up (I hope it's okay. I'll probably need to monitor its condition.) I really hope that a replacement LCD/screen assembly will fix the problem. I'll know in a few days and post my results here for anyone else who may be suffering similar pain.

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Sounds like you did all the right things, hopefully a new display will help you out. Let us know, good luck.

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Well, I did the screen replacement and it did not work. The screen is still black, although the touchscreen functions are all working (as well as I can manipulate a dark touchscreen.) I'm not seeing any faint images or light of any kind.

I don't know what to do at this point.

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Hi there, I have exactly the same problem.

I too have now changed the screen but to no avail. I keep hearing about this coil thingy but have no idea what that means. Do I need to get the soldering iron out?

Any other advice is appreciated!!

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Again, I can not stress the importance of cleaning it properly. Especially since your phone already showed all that corrosion. Make sure the connectors are all clean. If you still do not have anything, it is possible that replacing the coil and or IC will resurrect it. The only way to know if you LCD works, would be by connecting it to a known working phone. I updated my original answer so you can see what is to be done. The image is from here. The components are very small and it takes some special skills to solder those parts.

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Same scenario with wet iPhone, black screen, blah blah blah. If I shine a high powered light at the screen in a dark environment i can faintly see the screen images. Backlight IC coil thingy?

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@Jacob Lingo, yup, first the Display assembly, then the "Backlight IC coil thingy"

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hi my iphone 4s got wet in a swimming pool and i put it in rice and now i can see the backlight turn on but the screen doesn't show anything. Any help on repairs would be greatly appreciated

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Wet iPhone. Just to let u know my daughter dropped phone into toilet and we tried the rice letting dry out.. then we got news to take phone apart take the battery out in place that phone in the oven. .I know the oven.. freaked me out at first..well you have to have the oven on only 150 degrees first of all. Most ovens don't go that low.. so you have to use a small oven that sits on the counter.. not the big house oven..my small one had the 150 temp on it..OK OK so I did this for two hours after trying all the other things... and I put the phone back together and powered on and what do u know.. phone works seems to b all OK..

I only took the battery out I left every thing else together. Put aluminum foil under the phone and please let the phone Cool before turning back on. Today is the second day n the phone is doing great...

Update

Before I did the oven trick, I could not see my screen at all..good luck.

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Hi Tina! Could you explain the process of the whole oven thing? Im scared to try that, do you think that could work on an iPhone 5C?

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I got the same story too,but these answers don't work.

Does someone have a powerfull answer for this.

I tried to hold the power button and the home button.

But it don't work.

PLEASE HELP ME

I GOT THIS PROBLEM 2 YEARS

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