Your Phone Got Wet! What Do You Do Now? Welcome to Liquid Damage Season! AKA, Summertime!

I remember it like it was yesterday -- and at one of the thousands of tech repair shops around the country it was yesterday -- I got a call in my office that one of my good friends from church was down at the repair shop and he was super upset. My tech told me he was frantic and needed to talk to me directly.

I was in a meeting with my warehouse staff but I jumped up from my desk and headed down to the shop. On the way I wondered what was wrong. Had someone in our small group been injured? Maybe one of my family members were hurt? Was it another fundraising campaign for the new church building? What could be so important???

I hugged my good friend as I met him in the shop and asked him what was wrong. With tears in his eyes he said, "I really hope you can help Rob." I thought for sure that someone had died. 

He slowly lifted a beach bag and emptied four *almost* brand new iPhone's on the counter next to a couple of sea shells along with a little sand mixed-in. The smell of the ocean filled nostrils and then it hit me. LIQUID DAMAGE! 

Four, salt water, liquid damaged iPhone's! Ouch! 

He had just come from the Apple store where the geniuses had told him what the Apple store always tells people when your iPhone gets wet, "so sorry but liquid damage can't be fixed and this means the end of these iPhone's forever and ever and ever. However, Apple would be very happy to sell you brand new iPhone's because these iPhone's will NEVER EVER WORK AGAIN!"

"Rob", my friend said. "I can't afford four new iPhone's and we have tons of pictures from our family vacation on these iPhone's that were never backed up. What do we do...? What... do... we... do...?"

HAPPY ENDING? Pretty much! We were in fact able to fully recover three of the four iPhone's and they lived another day -- actually a few years. The forth iPhone was not as lucky but we were able to recover all the data (those priceless family pictures). In the end my friend only had to replace one phone which he bought used because he wasn't going back to the Apple store.

BOTTOM LINE: LIQUID DAMAGED PHONES CAN BE FIXED!

What you do after a phone gets wet is critical

Do one thing and one thing only: Take it to a PROFESSIONAL REPAIR SHOP!

You're going to want to do a lot of things. Don't! Find one of the thousands of local tech repair shops around the country, ask them if they are familiar with working on liquid damaged phones and then drop it off for service with them. NOTE: If they are not familiar with working on liquid damaged phones find a shop that is! Ship it off if need be but don't wait. Do it now!

"But WiGoMan I heard that if you __________ it's all good."

• Put it in rice - STOP rice sucks as a drying agent and could possibly do more damage. Can't tell you how many rice grains I've seen clog ports.
• Dry it in an oven - nothing like broasting a wet phone and listening to the board sizzle, the screen fizzle and the battery go POP!
• Buy a "Dry Bag" to put it in - Radio Shack sold these and they did so well with them that... nuff said.
• Use a hair dryer or heat gun - horrible idea. As you BLOW hot air into the phone it pushes the liquid into MORE places & under sensitive shielded areas of the main board. Don't!
• Shake out the liquid - 'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play and the haters gonna...' NO, you can't shake it off in this case.
• Put it in the freezer - please don't. Just don't even consider it, okay?
• Use Silica Gel to dry it - Even if you have successfully collect all the small silica packets from you shoe purchases over the years. It's not going to save you device now.

IMPORTANT NOTICE - IMPORTANT NOTICE - IMPORTANT NOTICE

WET PHONES FOR DUMMIES: Don't charge the phone or try to turn it on! That's like tossing a toaster into the bathtub. Electricity + Water = Bad Stuff!

IMPORTANT NOTICE - IMPORTANT NOTICE - IMPORTANT NOTICE

Phone's Dry, All Good Right?

Ah... no! You're not good. In fact here is where the real issue begins. You see the liquid (actually the impurities in the liquid) may or may not cause something in the phone to short circuit and I'm not talking about the cute 1986 robot comedy Short Circuit because your phone is not about to achieve consciousness and go on a fun adventure with Ally Sheedy and Steve Guttenberg [Number Five is Alive]. Shortly after the liquid damage your phone might not power on, charge, respond to touch, no sound, no volume control, etc.

The phone will dry at some point but it will very well start having issues that are directly related to the liquid damage, well more specifically the damage left behind which is mainly going to be CORROSION and she's a mean one. It might cause the phone to overheat which will cause even more problems or it might get on the connections to certain components in the phone (i.e., LCD, Digitizer, Charge port, speakers, battery, etc.) which will cause those things to malfunction. You see corrosion is kinda like mold (not really but people understand mold). Once it appears it ain't going away unless you clean it. It's just going to keep growing and messing things up (Try not cleaning your toilet for a month or two and you'll see what I mean).

If you don't read any further, fine, it's about to get more technical and some of you might get a little sleepy now. So I repeat, take your liquid damaged phone into a PROFESSIONAL REPAIR SHOP! NOW!!

Okay, I Get It. Liquid Bad!

But what is a professional repair shop going to do for me?

Well shucks, I thought you would never ask.

First of all, be 100% certain that the shop you take it into is familiar with working on liquid damaged devices. They don't have to do board-level repair (we'll talk about that in another post) but it shouldn't be their first rodeo. Ask some questions, check their website and make sure they know what they are doing. If they say they can do it quickly, like in an hour, find someplace else. This process takes time it shouldn't be rushed and let me tell you why.

A professional repair shop is going to follow these basic steps:


1) Inspect the device, ask questions about what happened and WHEN it happened. The sooner you get it to them the better! 

2) Once they have your device they should take it apart immediately to disconnect the battery and start drying the device of excess liquid. Even if we had other repairs in the queue I would complete this step to make sure the device isn't dying on the table.

3) When work begins on the device  they should completely disassemble it in preparation for it to be chemically cleaned. Each and every piece of the phone needs to be taken apart and visually inspected for signs of liquid. (I found a jewelers eye of magnifying glasses to be handy here) If you see stains inside on the shields you'll need to remove the shields on the main-board too because it's liquid and if it made it this far it made it inside the shields. Again, this is not a quick fix!

Professional Repair shops use different kinds of chemical solvents to clean the device but they should be safe and not overly corrosive. If your phone smells like gasoline when their done something was wrong!

Let's take a quick break here, if you're a repair person/shop watch this video from iPad Rehab for in depth advice on performing liquid damage repair.

4) Time for the motherboard to take a dip in the chemical bath inside the ultra-sonic cleaner while the other components are carefully hand cleaned with a soft brush. There are a few different methods and types of machines to use. I highly recommend that a shop invest in the best equipment that it can afford. The better the equipment the more likely it will be you can complete high quality repairs for you customers and make money. This is one of the things that makes a professional repair shop as apposed to someone who is just eating the low hanging fruit - in this case broken iPhone screens (get the pun?).

5) The last step before you reassemble the device is to dry it. I was always an air-dry-kind-of-guy but some shops will use a hot plate which is another piece of equipment you should have! DON'T USE A HEAT GUN!

6) After carefully reinspecting the components it's time to reassemble the device

to test functionality of the features and components. Somethings might need to be replaced (i.e., charge port, camera, speaker, mic, etc.) but ALWAYS replace the battery for a successful repair! If it needs to move on to main-board repair talk that process through with your customer in the next step.

7) CALL THE CUSTOMER and communicate what the final charges will be for this repair and make 100% sure they want it completed or if they just want data extracted.

8) Complete the repair and and call the customer for pickup or direct shipping. Congratulations what Apple said can't be done is done. 

During my time owning and operating repair shops I saw thousands of liquid damaged devices come into my shops. Most were successfully repaired and went on to live a long and productive life after they left my shop. Don't believe what Apple or other inexperienced repair people will tell you. A liquid damaged device can be repaired if you get it repaired the right way!

There are literally thousands of independent professional repair shops all around the country (the smart ones would list their info in the comments section on this blog so customers could find them). If your device has gotten liquid damage on any kind RUN, don't walk to one of them for help!

Repair Shop owners please feel free to comment and/or list you company info in the comments section below.