We’ll go more into the details, explanations, etc. below. For now just do these 3 things!
1. Take a few seconds to gently dry the exterior of the phone using a towel or paper towel. Avoid pressing in power and volume buttons while you’re drying. You’ll need them in step 2, and you may only get one chance at using them successfully.
2. Shut down (completely power off) the phone, immediately and completely:
• iPhone with Face ID: Simultaneously press and hold the side button and either volume button until the sliders appear, then drag the Power Off slider.
• iPhone with the Home button: Press and hold the side button or Sleep/Wake button (depending on your model), then drag the slider.
• Android: hold down the power button until you are given the option to Shut Down, then choose Shut Down.
• Can’t get the phone to respond at all, or can’t get it to shut down? Don’t panic. Just move quickly onto step 3.
3. Open up the phone, remove the battery, discharge the phone (hold down the power button for 20 seconds), completely dismantle the phone down to and including the point of removing the motherboard, place the battery aside in a cool place, and dry out all the other phone parts in 100 degree dry heat.
• If you have the tools and experience, do this yourself. Look up a video on YouTube for battery replacement for your phone, to see how to open it and how to avoid slicing / breaking cables as you open it.
• If you don’t have the tools and experience, get the phone immediately to a local technician or shop who can dismantle and dry out the inside of your phone. Expect to pay about $150 to $200 for this, depending on the technician and the model of your phone.
• Don’t Forget to place the battery aside in a cool place. Do NOT ever apply any heat to the battery.
• Don’t heat the phone parts beyond 100 degrees fahrenheit.
• Don’t Use a vacuum. A vacuum frequently causes and carries static electricity. Static electricity is particularly damaging to the parts of your phone that hold your pictures, files, data, and settings.
• Don’t Use a hair dryer, unless you hold a thermometer over the phone to monitor the heat and ensure that the temperature is NOT exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Most hair dryers will make this very difficult.
• Don’t Check the phone to see if it is still working, UNTIL it is completely dry. Every second it has power is another second where it is possibly shorting itself out.
• Don’t Put it in a bag of rice. It’s a waste of valuable precious time where you could be following the correct procedure above. Rice mostly absorbs water it touches, and the water you need to eliminate is inside the phone where the rice can’t get to it. And rice absorbs water from the air far, far too slowly to save your device.
• Don’t Be lured into believing rice works. Some people are absolutely certain it does because their phone survived on its own. The rice didn’t help. They need to run an experiment comparing methods and they’ll realize the rice is just way too slow compared to our method above.
• Don’t pay for a “water damage repair” up front … yet. Let all the parts of the completely dismantled phone dry out completely, then decide what to do. Read on …
• Check your backup. Log on to iCloud (for iPhones) or Google (for Samsung, Moto, LG, Google, OnePlus, and all other androids) and check for phone backup.
• iPhone: Open iCloud (the iCloud utility program on your computer), Click Storage, Select Backup
• Android / Google:
• Go to drive.google.com.
• On the bottom left under "Storage," click the number.
• On the top right, click Backups.
• Choose an option:
• View details about a backup: Right-click the backup and then Preview Preview.
• Reassemble it, and see if it works. Remember these important rules: Replace the battery. Don’t re-use the battery that may have been exposed to water. It is now a fire / explosion hazard. Always ground yourself (using an anti-static wrist strap connected to a grounding path) when handling the inside of your phone.
• If your phone works, hurray! Make sure your phone is getting backed up regularly. There is a chance that the water began a corrosion process before you managed to dry it out fast enough, and it may fail suddenly without notice. However, you have greatly reduced the risk of that by drying it out quickly and safely.
• If your phone doesn’t work, and you have pictures or other data in it that you need to get back,
• … don’t despair. The data can be retrieved from a water damaged phone in 90% of cases.
• … don’t take it back to the manufacturer or their authorized service provider. There’s no harm in it, but it’d be a bummer if they successfully convinced you the data is gone forever, because they are most often wrong about that.
• … email support@hailageek.com. Explain what happened with your phone, and that you need to know if the data can be restored. We’ll get it into the hands of one of our expert data recovery technicians. If we can’t help you, you won’t be charged.
When you have a water-damaged phone, big pieces of your world can come to a grinding halt. Whether it slips into a pool, a puddle, a sea, or a toilet, it’s rare that something good comes next. After all, your phone is a high-tech device that costs a pretty penny, and more importantly, it one you rely on to stay in touch with everyday activities.
Moreover, the odds are that it might now be unusable. Worse yet, you might lose important files, photos, and videos. Before you panic, it’s time to learn how to fix a water-damaged phone. But if your phone gets dunked into water, repair often feels like a coin toss. Can anyone guarantee a positive outcome?
While there’s no universal answer, it’s always worth a shot! When you call on a trusted technician from HAILaGEEK, intervene with best practices from the beginning to rescue your phone. Better yet, we meet you wherever you are to offer a higher level of convenience.
Not everyone has the luxury of owning a water-resistant phone. When your phone takes a dive, it feels like a devastating situation. Still, it’s important to act fast. The longer a phone stays underwater, the lower the odds are for survival.
Even if it’s in the toilet, try to get it out of the water as fast as possible. Then, make sure it’s off and keep it off. Even when the phone seems okay, it’s a good idea to turn it off.
If your phone has a battery that you are able to remove yourself, go ahead and take it out. When you turn off a device, it helps to ensure that electricity doesn’t continue flowing to important parts of the phone that might be damaged by being shorted out.
When you have a water-damaged phone, how you react is crucial. Your next moves mean the difference between a survival story and a trashed device. So, it’s important to be careful.
Before we dive into solutions, let’s cover some measures to mitigate damage and prevent major failures. Don’t turn on your phone or test it to see how it’s working. As you might imagine, the electrical components don’t play well with liquids. For the same reason, don’t plug the phone in either. Avoid pressing keys or buttons. Unfortunately, this potentially pushes liquid further into the phone. Your best bet is to not mess with the phone at all, except for following our 3 step urgent procedure at the top of this page. Don’t blow into or shake the phone. This can also cause water to move deeper into the phone. Absolutely avoid using a hairdryer. The heat from a hair dryer is excessive to a phone, and it could damage your device; also, the lithium ion batteries inside phones are very susceptible to heat, and they will catch fire or explode if heated excessively. Don’t heat the phone over 100 degrees fahrenheit in any way. Excessive heat damages the phone.
If you want to know how to fix a water-damaged phone, your best bet is to work with a pro. At HAILaGEEK, our technicians offer tech repair when and where you need it. Whether you’re at the pool or fell into a koi pond at work, we meet you where you are to rescue your device.
First of all, this doesn’t mean taking apart your whole phone… Instead, remove components until you are able to remove the mainboard. For example, if the back cover of the phone is removable, take it off. Ground yourself by wearing an anti static wrist strap connected to a ground path. At the very least, work on a tile or wood floor (NOT carpet) and frequently discharge any electricity that you may have inside your body by touching something large and metal.
Similarly, take your battery out along with the SIM card and SD card. Then, lay everything out on a paper towel.
Typically, late-model phones don’t have removable backs, so just do what you can. From here, things get a little more technical.
If you have experience with tech repair and know the innards of a phone (and don’t mind voiding any warranties), go ahead and disassemble the phone enough to remove the mainboard. This helps greatly to dry the phone out faster. Watch a Youtube video “how to replace the battery” for your specific phone, for instructions to get you that far.
Note: For an iPhone, you will need a pentalobe screwdriver to remove the two bottom screws from the phone, and, starting with the iPhone 7, you’ll need a tri-wing driver to remove shields and motherboard screws. Don’t try to use a phillips head or flat head, even if it is tiny. You’ll strip those screws quickly, and then the necessary work gets a lot more difficult and expensive.
It is crucial to be careful. If you don’t have experience with tech repair, you might do more harm to your water-damaged phone than good. If you become uncomfortable, use the HAILaGEEK website to hail a geek to come to your location and finish the job. Our geeks don’t mind finishing a job that you started yourself.
While the removable components dry, it’s good to clean the exterior of the phone. With a paper towel or a cloth, dry it off as much as possible.
However, remember that it’s important not to jostle the phone too much. Dry it gently without moving the device around too much. When water makes its way deep into a phone, it’s never good news.
Option #1 (preferred): Search Youtube and Google for how to set up a box with a mild heat source (such as a light bulb) for keeping a new baby bird warm. The level of heat needed by a baby bird (95 degrees fahrenheit) is almost exactly the level of heat your water-exposed phone needs to dry out safely and quickly.
Option #2 (better than nothing): place the phone next to a window in the sunlight, but check frequently with a thermometer to make sure it is not getting hotter than 100 degrees fahrenheit. The downsides of this option are that it may overheat during the day, and will go without heat when the sun goes down.
Oftentimes, this is the most difficult part of the process. You have to leave your phone alone for a while. We know, we know… waiting isn’t easy.
However, it’s quite necessary. If you have a spare phone to use in the meantime, just be sure the SIM card is totally dry before you use it. Otherwise, try your landline or your computer. When in doubt, there are always carrier pigeons, or if you’re in a really tight spot, there’s always the neighbors.
So, you followed the steps and waited patiently. Now, it’s time to see whether your effort pays off. Put your phone back together and plug it in.
Try to turn it on and see what happens. If it turns on, congratulations on your successful water-damaged phone rescue! Keep an eye out for any odd behavior and test out different components.
Make a call to ensure the speaker, microphone, and earpiece work. If you notice any issues, it’s probably time to call in a professional.
Even if your phone works, keep in mind that its overall life expectancy has still been compromised. Water has touched components that were designed to never touch water. The process of corrosion has begun. Your phone may last a few more years before the damage causes a noticeable failure, but just be aware that it will no longer last as long as it was going to last before the water incident occurred.
If you have a good backup, you’ll be restoring your data to a replacement phone. You’ll need to stick with the same kind of phone you had before, in terms of iPhone or Android. You can switch from one brand of Android to another (Samsung, Moto, LG, etc) but you can’t switch to or from iPhone and restore all your data from a backup. It’s much easier to switch platforms when you’re starting with a working phone, rather than a broken phone and a backup.
If you don’t have a good, up to date backup, and the pictures and other data inside your phone are valuable, you will definitely want to pay a knowledgeable, skilled professional to apply the best efforts first toward rescuing your data. You can expect to pay $250 to $500+ for this service, depending on the extent of the damage. Email us at emailus@hailageek.com, and we will help you get your phone into the hands of the exact right technician for the type of rescue you need. In your email, please let us know as much as possible about what happened.
Very important note: the best, most skilled technicians will not charge you anything if they cannot recover data from your device. Their experience and overall success rate is so high that they can guarantee success and still be profitable despite an occasional unrecoverable phone. We can get you in touch with this level of technician. Don’t expose your water damaged phone to a lesser technician’s efforts.
Where others give up, HAILaGEEK technicians will go the extra mile for your phone and its data! Our team has the experience and expertise to offer tech repair when and where you need it. For professional help at your convenience, hail a geek from this website or download the HAILaGEEK app and have a tech meet up with you right away.
Rice absorbs water it touches reasonably well. But, the water you really need to eliminate is inside the phone where the rice can’t get to it. And rice absorbs water from the air far, far too slowly to effectively dehumidify the air to remove water from inside your device fast enough to minimize damage.
Don’t put your device in a bag of rice and hope for the best. It’s a waste of valuable precious time where you could be following the correct 3-step procedure above. Meanwhile, sensitive components and connectors inside your phone are beginning to short out and rust.
Some people are absolutely certain rice works because their phone survived water damage on its own. The rice didn’t help.
Not convinced? Take two same size lids (from your kitchen cabinet, drawer, tupperware collection. Put an exactly equal amount of water inside each lid. (One exact teaspoon, for example). Place one in 100 degree dry heat (see our recommended processes above). Place the other inside a sealed ziploc bag of rice. Each hour, observe the amount of water remaining in the lid. You’ll find the lid in the 100 degree heat loses all its water much faster than the one in the ziploc bag with rice.
We’re so glad you asked.
First, sensitive components are getting “shorted out.” Water carries electricity. It doesn’t do a great job, but it does it well enough to cause damage. So, wherever there is a drop of water inside your phone, it’s creating a connection between two or more tiny components inside your phone that should not be connected. And similar to when a person accidentally touches a live electrical wire, these tiny sensitive components are getting fried. If one of those components is the one that holds your pictures, those pictures are getting erased.
Second, the slowly destructive process of rust has begun. Wherever water is sitting on a piece of metal (such as a metal component or connector), that piece of metal has begun to oxidize, or rust.
It can take months, even years, for a water-compromised component to rust enough to fail. The failure may begin with mildly weird behavior, or it may be an all-out suddenly complete failure.
Our best recommendation: Follow our 3 step process at the top of this page.
Less advisable, but better than nothing and definitely better than rice:
1. Tear off a new, long, thin piece of a paper towel and insert it gently into the charge port. It should go in about as far as the metal end of your charging connector is long. Not very long at all!
2. Hold the phone with the charge port at the bottom, pointing down at the ground so any water inside the phone will run down toward the charge port. Wiggle the paper towel piece around inside the charge port, then *gently* pull it out. Stop immediately if you feel any resistance, and get your phone to a technician who can safely remove the paper towel piece. If you feel resistance, you are able to tear off a part of your connector and destroy your charge port! If there is a piece of paper towel inside the charge port, do not plug in your charger because you will probably bend a pin on the charge port.
3. Examine the paper towel piece for any moisture. If there is moisture, repeat steps 1 and 2.
4. Continue repeating steps 1-3 until you are not seeing any moisture on the paper towel piece that you gently remove from the phone after wiggling it around.
5. If you saw any water on the paper towel piece you removed, there is probably more water inside the phone. You definitely want to follow steps 1 to 3 at the top of this page, immediately, to get remaining water out of your phone before it shorts out important components and accelerates the process of rust inside your phone.
There are a few key symptoms that point to a water-damaged phone.
• Corrosion marks around the ports
• The visual presence of water behind the screen
• Dried area markings on the screen
• A discolored Liquid Damage Indicator (LDI). Typically, an LDI is in the SIM tray slot, headphone jack, or battery component. After water damage, the LDI appears reddish.
It depends. Do you have an up to date backup of the data in your phone, such as iCloud or Google backup?
If you have a good backup, then the most valuable part of your phone is secure! Now you can just look at what it will cost to purchase a good used device to replace your water damaged device. Email us at emailus@hailageek.com to see what good, used phones we have for you. Be sure to tell us what device you have now, and if you’re looking to upgrade a bit, let us know what device(s) you’d like a price on. Note: to restore your data, you’ll need to stick with the same kind of phone you had before, iPhone or Android. You can switch from one brand of Android to another (Samsung, Moto, LG, etc) but you can’t switch to or from iPhone and keep all your data without a substantial amount of effort and/or expense.
If you don’t have a good up to date backup, and the pictures and other data inside your phone are valuable, you will absolutely want to pay a knowledgeable, skilled professional to apply the best efforts first toward rescuing your data. You can expect to pay $250 to $500+ for this service, depending on the extent of the damage.
Very important: the best, most skilled technicians will not charge you anything if they cannot recover data from your device.
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Difference
vendor, HAILaGEEKTM engages 3 skilled techs to review disputed jobs and assess the quality of the work