Did you get pushed into a pool ? Drop your phone in a puddle ? leave it in your pocket and wash your clothes ? Someone spill a glass of water on your laptop keyboard ? You're not alone. We work on liquid damaged devices all day long and believe it or not this happens all the time. Just read this whole posting and even if your current device can't be saved you'll at least know what to do next time.
It's important to understand that cellular phones are NOT water proof, but some model do have a "liquid resistance" rating when they are brand new in the box. This means they will "resist" liquid intrusion into the device under specific testing conditions when initially manufactured. This liquid resistance changes over time and will diminish as the device ages, suffers impacts, is exposed to high temperatures, or other daily use issues.
If the liquid intrusion sensors are triggered or there are any signs of liquid intrusion / contact inside the device your warranty with Apple, Samsung, and other manufacturers are voided. If you bring a liquid damaged iPhone to the Apple Store your only option would be to purchase a new iPhone as it's not a manufacturers defect regardless of how it happened.
Pricing for all our liquid damage services start with a base diagnostic charge of $29 for phones and $39 for laptops. After the device is inspected the required parts, labor and consumable materials are added to the quote as needed. Each scenario is different so exact pricing can't be quoted without first inspecting the device.
*** WARNING ***
If your device has been water damaged DO NOT attempt to turn it back on !!! This will usually cause more damage. Even if it seems to be working normally the metal connection points on your mother board or logic board are already corroding and it's just a matter of time before the device can never be cost effectively saved. If it has a removable battery like a laptop or android phone you'll want to remove that as soon as possible to prevent additional damage.
One thing that happens to most phones that get wet is they will usually immediately shut off. Most people make the horrible mistake of trying to turn it back on to "see" if it still works or even worse put it on a charger. The issue is that most all water has minerals (salts) in it. These minerals (salts) remain when the water is dried off normally, and these minerals are conductive. They will cause shorts within your device's sensitive electronics by allowing unregulated electricity to flow to areas it shouldn't.
Don't go to your buddy who just happens to know how to open these phones up or thinks he can figure it out. In 90% of the cases if you submerge a phone or spill enough liquid on a laptop keyboard and contact is even a few seconds your device is just 1 step away from becoming a total brick or door stop. We see horror stories every day of people who opened their device up somehow and made things so much worse. First of all there's almost no chance you have the correct tools so that you don't leave massive marks all over the case, then after that if you do get it open do you have any clue what needs to be done ? We use a multi-step process to properly inspect, remove all mineral deposits and test the system board and micro electronics for failed components. Then we address the electronics and repair the commonly damaged components.
This is what your a phone Logic board will look like after brief exposure to water / liquid , the rest of the device will also have damage like this.
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The Logicboard in the above picture is from a phone that was dropped in a toilet for just a few seconds and brought to us a few days later. After we cleaned up the board and replaced a few board level parts we were able to recover all data from this phone. |
