How to Save a Wet Cell Phone

Step 6 Rrport your success/failure!

Now your phone hopefully functions as good as new! Let us all know how it worked (or didn't) and keep your information-lifeline away from swimming pools!

Comments

[kmcallister2]

Ok. A friend of mine went swimming in a pool for an hour with his Samsung Galaxy S tucked securely in his swimming trunks. He was bummed. Here's what I did (after lots of research online...).
1. Took back off of phone
2. Removed battery and SD card
3. Soaked phone, battery, and SD card in 91% Isopropyl Alcohol for two minutes. (that may have killed the battery for good...I'm not sure...but the battery did not survive.) The idea is that the alcohol will displace the water and then evaporate quickly from all the conductive parts.
4. Shook phone back and forth for a minute or two to work the excess alcohol out of the phone.
5. Used a vacuum with a very tiny nozzle to suck up moisture that I could see.
6. Used a blow dryer on the back of the phone while switching between low/med/high so as to not overheat the phone circuitry and whatnot.
7. While I don't think I needed to do this, I unscrewed the 6 screws on the back and to closer to the phone circuitry (I found a video online showing me how to do this properly.) To my amazement, by this time, I could see no visible moisture.
8. Seeing the success of the oven idea above...I figured I stick the phone on a hot pad in the toaster oven on 125...I got nervous about it and took it out after 5 minutes or so.
9. I considered the rice...but I felt too impatient. I decided to throw the spare battery in it and see what would happen.
10. IT WORKED!!!! Perfectly. Swyping the screen worked. The touch screen had no degradation. Camera worked just fine. Phone calls worked. No degradation of sound quality. Missed text messages starting rolling in.

Hope this helps somebody else out there!

[ataplow]

 Been working for a day on this and it's finally successful.  I was drinking a glass of cider at a meeting and someone bumped my elbow - cider soaked my shirt and the shirt pocket with my cell phone.  It would turn on but the touch pad wouldn't respond to anything.  

After removing the battery and simm & memory cards, I first rinsed it in water and put it into the oven at 150 for 20 minutes.  No luck. Saw moisture on the touchpad, so I tried it again for 40 minutes, but still no luck.

Then today I froze it and it worked till it thawed out and then it stopped again.

Finally I took it apart enough to loosen a circuit board to give it some breathing room.  Then soaked it 70% isopropyl  (I know you said 91%, but all I had was 70), and then put it back in an electric oven at 150 degrees for an hour  to dry out the alcohol.   I let it cool in the oven and then reassembled it.   Viola - it all works except the camera, which I hardly ever use anyway.  My main use is for calls and my schedule calendar.   All data is still there - wheew!

I priced out a replacement and phones would have started at $150.  

[FilAmFighter01]

This has happen twice to us last summer. My son jumped in to the salt water pool on the big island then remebered his phone was in his pocket. We did the island thing strip it wash it fresh water, stick in bag of rice. It was never quite right, had to replace it. OK then my phone, which was off, falls into the dog water bowl-fresh water-yuck, I removed it, stripped it of the back plate and battery. It put the parts in a bag of raw white rice for 24 hour, then removed it and used a can of dust off on all of the keys, any openings, etc. The phone was a little slow on the boot up firts time but everything was saved. All is good now.