Help - IPhone 3GS fell into a pothole and got drenched!

nulabert

Yesterday i was getting out of the car and the feckin Iphone fell out of my hand and into a pothole in the carpark. Luckily i reacted quickly and pulled it out although it did go under the water. Anyways, took out the sim and proped it up by the fire place for the night.

This morning I plugged it in to charge it and hey presto, the durable Iphone is fully functioning except for the WIFI.

It seems that the wifi has disconnected (prob the water) and its greyed out on the screen. I did all apple recommend for software restarts etc but I think the water got in to this part and its possibly fecked!

Has this happened to anyone and who fixed it?

Maybe another night by the fireplace might dry the wifi connectors?

Thanks

nulabert

Well I've solved my wet Iphone problem, judging by the lack of responses, most people here are more careful than me.:D

Anyways, heres how i did it in case anyone ever has this problem.

1) Open the 2 Philips screws at the bottom near the charging point.
2) Get a sat nav suction cup and place it on the screen, wriggle it a bit and the screen comes off.
3) There are 3 leads close to the earpiece that connect the screen to the motherboard on the back, 2 ribbons click of and the third no.3 (labelled) is tricky, you flick up a white clip to release the ribbon.
4) Open a scatter of screws and other ribbons (see here)
5) Get some Isopropyl Alochol swabs in the chemist and clean all the connections. Its 70% alochol so it will evaporate fairly quickly
6) Put it back together.

Thats it.:)

I left 2 days before i went at this, i dried it out by the stove the first 2 nights. If it was again i'd open it straight away. Its fairly straight forward, the only hard part is putting ribbon 3 back in the slot with a tweezers. That bit is tedious but do-able.

Also, by doing this you violate the warranty - however, the warranty may not cover water damage so the choice is yours!

This site is handy for figuring out what part is what.

elgriff

Never plug it in until u have given it a good chance to dry (e.g. wrapped in a towel in a hotpress). if you give it a chance to dry fully, you wont short the circuits

Dublinstiofán

I'd try what's mentioned above. One or both of the water indicators will more than likely have changed colour if it's been submerged in water so you can't deal with Apple anymore anyway. (one is in the headphone jack and one is at the dock connector if either have turned red you can forget about Apple doing anything helpful)

however on another note if it is in warranty and you wanted to chance your arm Apple offer a service for customers who need a new phone straight away. They charge a once off fee of €30 and for this €30 they send you a new/refurb iPhone without having seen yours first. I wouldn't open it yourself if you were trying this option.

Where as if you don't pay this fee they require you to send your phone in first for diagnostics before they send out a replacement and you get nothing if it's water damaged.

Robbyn

Dublinstiofán wrote: »

Where as if you don't pay this fee they require you to send your phone in first for diagnostics before they send out a replacement and you get nothing if it's water damaged.

Apple do say that you get nothing if your phone was water damaged, or physically damaged and your not insured through o2 or another insurance deal.

Recently though I water damaged my iphone, It got completely drenched and I brought it to 02, to see what options I had, I hadn't got it insured so basically I was told that 02 couldn't help me and Apple wouldn't help me, since it was water damaged. But the guy in the o2 store did tell me that Apple like to keep customers happy, and he told me a story of a guy who dropped his iphone down a flight of stairs and sent it to Apple in pieces (they don't replace your phone if its physically damaged either) and a week later they sent him out a brand new iphone, even though "they don't cover physical damage"

So I thought I would chance it, sent in my completely water logged iphone to Apple (there was water visible behind the camera lens and condensation on the screen, so it was quite obvious) and hey presto, a week later they sent me out a replacement phone for a charge of 29 euro, so this seems to be true about Apple wanting to keep customers happy, so when they say they don't cover water or physical damage, it's not strictly true.

There's a lot more complicated details to it, but thats the cut down version, basically you send them in your phone and they send you out a replacement and place a charge of 500 euro on your credit card, when they get your phone and inspect it, and see that your entitled to a new phone (which sometimes your not, but they give you one anyway) they take the charge off your credit card and replace it with one for 29 euro.

However It would be wise not to use the replacement phone until you know for sure they aren't charging you the 500, because they could say its used and you have no choice then, where as, if you didn't, then you could just send it back and stay iphoneless.

So if an Iphone was water damaged or physically damaged, even though Apple say that they don't replace it in those cases, I would still chance it, I mean, It's proven to work.

nulabert

So if an Iphone was water damaged or physically damaged, even though Apple say that they don't replace it in those cases, I would still chance it, I mean, It's proven to work.

Ya, that seems like a good idea to chance your arm. My IPhone was under warranty but the warranty is only good in Italy. Thats the problem with the Iphone warranty, its only good for the country you bought it in and the same with apple care.

Anyways, thank god for youtube and Isopropyl Alochol swabs:)