iPhone Water Damage Fix

You are on the edge of pulling your hairs out, because you’ve dropped your iPhone (3G / 3GS / 4) in the toilet or accidentally tossed it in the washing machine and are now experiencing iPhone water damage . Before you panic and check your savings account to shell out an amount for a new iPhone or refurb unit don’t worry as I will describe in the steps below how in most cases you can revive your iPhone from its watery condition.

Check to see the status of your water damaged iPhone

Depending on how long your iPhone has been under water, check to see if your iPhone is on first. When the iPhone fell  in the toilet and you instantly grab it out, it will still be on in most cases.When it’s on turn it off immediately with the on/off button on top. When it gets stuck on the white pinwheel, hold the home- and on/off-button until it turns off. When your iPhone was in water for a longer time, for example in your washing machine (this happened to me) it most likely has turned off by itself. It’s tempting to try and turn it on, but don’t do this! You might turn your iPhone water damage worse when doing this. Just don’t panic and move on to the next step.

Remove sim card and dry the iPhone

When you’ve removed the casing, take out the sim card and leave it in a place to dry. In the meanwhile, after you’ve dried the iPhone with a paper towel try and let some excess water out by gently shaking the iPhone. Don’t start shaking it like a madman, you just want to get the big drops out. Next, find a blow dryer and use low heat for about fifteen minutes in the simcard- , headphone- and dock-opening to further dry the phone from the inside. Don’t get it too hot as your iPhone dislikes heat as much as water, A blow dryer too hot might damage your iPhone beyond repair.

Get out the rice and a ziplock bag to further extract the water from your iPhone

After doing the initial drying there still will be a lot of water in the iPhone. In order to get this of the remaining iphone water damage you will need to have some uncooked rice (brown or white) and a ziplock bag, tupperware or other airtight spot to put it in. Put your water damaged iPhone in the bag and make sure it is covered in rice nicely. Now store the bag in a nice and warm place and wait a few days for all the moisture to be absorbed by the rice. Besides rice another good absorbing material would be silica bags, you know the little white packets you find in newly purchased bags or wallets. You should be able to buy these packets online. The number of days you need to let your iPhone chill in its rice bath really depends on how heavy the iPhone water damage is. One or two days might be enough if it only was in your toilet shortly, a week or more might be better if your iPhone was in the water for a longer while (say from fifteen minutes up). Just be sure to check the status on your iPhone each day. You can take it out the bag and blow dry it each day in addition or pould the bag in the oven on low temperature (40 degrees Celsius) for a short while to speed up the absorbing process.

Tip: If you don’t have any rice or ziplock bags available or you want to dry out your iPhone water damage as fast as possible without the chance of rice clogging up your iPhone dock and headphone jack there are great water absorption bags available specialized in drying out electronic devices and they work wonders on iPhones too. People have had great succes in particular with BHEESTIE Bags which you can buy online. These bags can dry out electronics multiple times and carry blue beads in them which turn grey when you need to replace it.

Power up your iPhone or restore it through iTunes

When your iPhone has enjoyed its rice bath (or BHEESTIE Bag) for a long enough time take it out and plug in the power.  Because the battery might have been drained empty by the water you might have to wait a while for the Apple logo to show up. Now what happens next differs from each situation, but when you’re lucky you can just turn your iPhone on and carry on using it like normal. When you’re not so lucky you might have to connect to iTunes and restore your iPhone software. Remember that you can put your iPhone in restore mode by holding the home and top button for around 10 seconds when it’s connected to your computer.

When your iPhone is still not responding after following the procedure above remember that you can get a discounted replacement iPhone (in the U.S.) when sending it to Apple, this will be much cheaper than buying a brand new iPhone. I hope however that you’re able to fix your iPhone water damage with this method, which has had success for numerous people. Also check out some more Iphone water damage fixes.