iPhone water damage can be a real tragedy. At iFixYouri, we’ve repaired hundreds of thousands of water-damaged devices, and heard every kind of story imaginable. You can be enjoying a beautiful summer day when your good buddy decides to cool you off with a little surprise dip into the pool. Unfortunately, your iPhone takes a dip with you.

Now that it’s nice and hydrated, what happens to your phone?

What a lot of folks do is let it completely dry, maybe in a ventilated place or next to a heater. Once it’s dry, they turn it on and start using it again. This is probably the worst thing you can do. If you never take your phone for a proper cleaning of the motherboard and other internal parts, corrosion and mineral deposits will sit on the board and slowly eat away at it.

Think of it as rust on a car. You may start with a small pit mark, but with age and time, this pit mark will spread to something far more significant, damaging the rest of the body work. Over time, your phone’s parts will die one by one, and eventually you will have a non-working phone. With a quick cleaning performed as soon as possible, your phone can have a full, healthy life post-dunk.

So why exactly does a water-damaged iPhone stop working? What does the corrosion do?

In this image, you can see a short on one of the circuits. This is caused by either the phone being powered on during initial contact with the water, or the attempting to see if the phone still has power by trying to charge it. These are both big no-no’s. If your phone gets wet, immediately power it off and do not charge it. Place it in a bag of silica gel and get it professionally cared for.

There are 3 or 4 water damage sensors on every iPhone, depending on the version: 1 in the headphone jack, 1 in the dock charging port, and 1 (or 2) on the mother board.

Corrosion on any of the circuits, coils, or resistors needs to be removed properly. It will spread, cause shorts, and malfunctions if it is not cleaned using the correct equipment.

The combination of any of these will cause your phone to not function correctly. Contrary to what people believe, a the majority of water-damage issues can be repaired and phone can be brought back to good, working condition. If you happen to drop your phone in water, please contact us as soon as possible. We’re here to help, and by all means, reach out to us. Water damage repair is a very difficult process, but the rock-star technicians at iFixYouri have years of experience and can quickly, easily, and affordably get your phone to like-new condition and back in your hands as soon as possible.