Submerged cell phone!

Question

Circuit production engineers: Is there any hope? It went into salt water. I rinsed it in fresh water pretty thoroughly and am now wondering if an additional rinse in denatured alcohol (mostly ethanol) would be helpful (as is recommended for a dunked outboard motor), or will the adhesives and plastic parts of the electronics be adversely affected? Any other ideas for restoration? Thanks.

Answer 1

That liquid probably shocked the board no matter what you do to try to fix it. Denatured alcohol will clean off corrosion but most of the time if a phone was completely submerged and the liquid hit the board it won't power on. Sometimes they do come out of it and work for a while but it's rare. Good luck.

Answer 2

you shouldnt of rinsed it in water,

it was already damaged enough by the salt water

maybe try drying it with a blow dryer

Answer 3

i had my phone in my back pocket one time and it fell in the toilet, lol. anyways, i rinsed it, ad took the battery out and put both the battery and the phone in the fridge. it was advice from a friend. not sure why, but it seemed to work. so if all else fails, try that.

Answer 4

my phone was submerged in beer before...i poured rubbing alcohol in the back where the battery goes and put it ontop of a fan..after the alcohol dried the phone worked...if alcohol doesn't work then the phone is probably beyond fixable

Answer 5

As the guy above said, it is really a question of whether or not you fried the board. Hopefully you immediately took out the battery.

I heard about people cleaning their computer keyboards using the top shelf of a dishwasher and letting it dry out. (Then again I ruined a keyboard with coffee -- wasn't fast enough to pull the plug).

I found two sites that might be helpful. http://www.tangentsoft.net/elec/movies/t... and

http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/19/how-t...

The first recommends IPA at 99 percent purity or ever clear (ethanol) which is 95 percent pure. Denatured alcohol is pure enough for that guy.

Answer 6

put your phone in a container (like glad) with rice and seal the container for at least 24 hrs- i've done this with my phone and my sister's digital camera and it's worked both times

Answer 7

Look it up in the search bar.

Trust me, I think it's one of the most frequently asked questions.