Although I’ve never had the misfortune of accidentally getting any of my iPhones wet, I’ve dropped a few. Lucky for me I have always had a good sturdy case to cushion the device from damage. I’ve heard plenty of stories of accidents where iPhones took a dip in the drink. Most of them ended badly. This story, though, ended differently.
Rob Griffiths was on vacation with his family, and as he was sitting alone in a boat on a lake he decided the scenery needed to be captured in a panoramic photo from his iPhone 5. He held the phone vertically, framing the shot, and then the…the horror.
I watched my iPhone fall, land on the back of the boat, then sickeningly slide off the boat and splash into the water. As it tumbled down through the clear water, the iPhone seemed to mock me: “Oh yea, you think you’re going to replace me!? Try living without a phone for a month, buddy!” Then, with a poof of mud, it came to rest on the bottom, at a depth of about 10 feet. The water was nice and clear, giving me a great view of the phone.
Rob figured the phone was instantly killed after it spent 5 minutes submerged in the clear lake water. Once retrieved, his suspicion was validated. The phone would not power on. Although he was upset at what happened, he tossed the wet iPhone aside knowing he had an old back up iPhone 3G.
Long story short — Rice and compressed air brought the previously dead iPhone to life. In fact, it’s so alive that it works as good as it did before it took the plunge. Rob’s fix isn’t for wimps. It took a lot of work, risky work, but he was successful. All the details can be found here.
If your iPhone gets wet, really wet, don’t automatically assume it’s permanently dead. With effort, it can come back to life and work as good as the day you bought it.