Water damage repair

Has anyone got any first hand experience with getting a water submersed iPhone repaired (or at least visible over USB for data recovery)?

Have a mate who’s 18 month old daughter put his wife’s phone in the toilet. They put in a bag of rice a week ago, and I tried to power it up today and it seems truly dead. Won’t turn on, and not visible in ASP (so not just dead screen).

Does anyone have a recommendation for places that might be able to take a look at if? Not fussed about keeping the hardware long term, but latest backup was Feb last year, and the wide is devastated about lost photos. :confused:

I took mine to Happy Tel in local supermarket centre. They charged $100 but got it going again, and it is still operational.
They may have strife if you have tried to start it up and delayed getting it to them. They don’t guarantee the work if there is liquid damage.
Only other option is to buy an iPhone 5S from the Post Office at a coast of $369 including $30- prepaid card.
Pity about the lost photos though…

Place like this might work: https://www.payam.com.au/services/mobile-device-data-recovery/

Rice isn’t a great desiccant at the best of times - but the thing is, getting rid of the water isn’t really the solution. Impurities in the water create corrosion as the water dries, corrosion creates short circuits on the boards - and by attempting to power the device on, this can result in power being delivered to parts of the circuit that aren’t intended to receive power.

Disassembly and careful cleaning of the boards is the best way - and even then it may not come back to life.

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Payam recently became an authorised data recovery centre for Apple in Australia, and their capabilities are fairly impressive. I’ve recently sent an SSD to them for a business client in for a disassembled chip-off data recovery. Data recovery in general is expensive, but it’s certainly an option if retrieving the data is absolutely critical.

Otherwise many third-party phone repairers can ultrasonic clean the boards and some can perform component level repairs if necessary, so that could also be an option.