Rescue a drowned iPhone

Mijn probleem

My cousin decided to take his phone swimming with him at a water park. Since it was in a Lifeproof case he thought it would be fine to keep in his pocket for ~30 minutes while in the water, so it was more or less completely submerged. The usual tricks (rice, leave alone for a few days) did nothing to help, so he got a replacement through his parent's insurance and left the soaked phone for me.

Mijn oplossing

The repair went fine. The iSclack was fantastic. I couldn't recommend it enough. If you think there's any chance you'll have to open up an iPhone 5/S/C more than once it's a worthy investment. No prying, no tricks. It's a bit scary when you're pressing the handle down and suddenly the screen snaps off, but after ~10 openings there has been no damage or problems.

I got the battery for the 5S mostly to get the tools to open the phone, and also because I figured that would be the least of the problems. Sure enough there was a lot of corrosion damage on the logic board and on the display connectors. The Speaker and front facing camera connectors were totally fried. I plugged in the new battery and nothing happened, so I decided to follow a different tutorial on cleaning water damage (Repairing iPhone Liquid Damage).

I only had 75% alcohol, but I cleaned up the corrosion with a q-tip and let the logic board soak for ~30 minutes and dry for 1.5 hours under a fan. When I put everything back together and plugged in the battery nothing happened, but when I plugged the phone in to power I heard the charge noise! It was showing up in iTunes, and I was able to restore the phone. Unfortunately the screen still wasn't working. I used a spare, broken iPhone 5S display to verify that it wasn't a problem with the logic board. It was really exciting knowing that I was able to bring this phone back to life. And then I broke everything again.

I tried taking apart the display to clean up the corrosion on those components as well, and I located some more corrosion on the Logic Board. So a bit more alcohol, and I let the log board soak again. This time I got impatient and only waited ~30 minutes after taking it out of the alcohol and drying under a fan to try putting it back together. I don't know if the alcohol was still present in the battery connector or what, but when I plugged in the battery and Lightning port to the logic board the speaker started making a static noise. It would stop if I disconnected either component, but I couldn't get it to show up in iTunes any more. After a couple minutes the static noise died, and I haven't gotten a peep from the device since. I let it dry for 3 days and tried putting it back together this morning, to no luck.

Mijn advies

Main lesson, once you've identified the problem component focus on that. I shouldn't have messed with the Logic Board after I verified that I had fixed the original problem.

Also, once I got it powered on the 'charger connected' noise played on a 5 second loop as long as it was connected to power. If unconnected it would not power on. There was no conclusive explanation I could find online, but I was able to verify that this is an indication that the phone isn't recognizing a usable LCD. I unplugged the LCD from my iPhone 5, which is in perfect working order, and didn't plug it in properly and it was giving the exact same noise.