Water and liquid damage, explained

The first hour

What you do in the first hour after a phone goes in water matters more than anything we do afterwards. Turn it off if it is on, and leave it off. Do not plug it in "to see if it charges", because current through a wet board is what causes the damage, not the water itself. Do not put it in rice; rice absorbs almost nothing from inside a sealed phone and the starch dust gets into the port. Do not shake it, heat it with a hairdryer or put it on a radiator. Take the case off, wipe it dry, stand it with the port facing down so any water can drain, and bring it to the counter the same day.

Sea water, pool water and anything sugary or fizzy are worse than tap water, because they leave salts and residue that keep conducting after the water has gone. If it went into any of those, the same-day rule matters even more.

Why "it still works" is not the end of the story

A phone that goes in water and keeps working is the one people forget about, and it is the one that fails three weeks later. Water inside the phone does not do the damage on day one. What does the damage is corrosion: a thin film of moisture with dissolved minerals, sitting across the pins of a component, slowly eating the metal while current runs through it. By the time the phone starts rebooting, losing its signal or refusing to charge, the corrosion has usually been growing for a fortnight. If the phone went in water and came out apparently fine, it is still worth bringing in to be opened, inspected and cleaned while there is nothing to repair yet.

What the cleaning involves

We open the phone, disconnect the battery straight away so nothing is powered, remove the board and any flex cables that were in the water's path, and inspect under magnification. The board goes into an ultrasonic bath in a cleaning solution designed for electronics, which dislodges the mineral film from between the pins, and then it is dried properly. We inspect it again, replace anything that is visibly corroded beyond cleaning, and reassemble with fresh adhesive seals. Then the phone is powered up and tested for the things liquid damage typically breaks: charging, the microphones, the speakers, the cameras and the signal.

The charging port and the bottom microphone are the parts that usually go first, because they sit at the opening where the water came in. Screens sometimes show a shadow or a line after liquid exposure and need replacing; batteries that were charged while wet sometimes swell and need replacing. All of that is quoted after the clean, once we can see what survived.

The realistic odds

We will tell you plainly. A phone that was turned off quickly and brought in the same day, after a dunk in clean water, has a good chance of coming back fully working. A phone that was left on, charged, or sat in a drawer for a week before anyone looked at it has a much lower one, and the repair is more often about getting the data off than saving the phone. Sea water and sugary drinks sit somewhere in between depending on how quickly it was dealt with. Diagnosis is free, and if we cannot fix it there is no repair charge for the attempt.

Data comes first

If the photos and messages matter more than the phone, say so when you hand it over. On a phone that will not stay on, we attempt to get the board stable long enough to back up the data before any repair that could risk it, and we give you the odds before you decide. A liquid-damaged phone is the most common reason people come to the data recovery page, and the two jobs are usually done together.

Water-resistance, and why it stops after the first repair

Most modern phones are rated to resist water when they are new. The rating depends on adhesive seals that age, and that are broken the first time the phone is opened for any reason, including a screen or battery replacement anywhere. A phone with a replaced screen is no longer water-resistant in the way it was, and we say so when we reseal it. Treat any repaired phone as one that should not go swimming.

What to bring

The phone, switched off, and the charger you normally use so we can test charging on a known-good supply once it is clean. If the phone was in something other than fresh water, tell the counter what it was.