Your Phone Got Wet — Do These Things First

Liquid damage rarely kills a phone instantly. What kills it is corrosion — a slow chemical reaction on the board that continues for days after the device looks dry. That means your goal in the first few minutes is not to dry the outside, but to stop current flowing through wet circuitry.

Do this immediately

• Power the phone off. Don't check if it still works — every second it stays on increases the damage.
• Do not plug it in to charge. Applying power to a wet board is the single most damaging thing you can do.
• Remove the case, SIM tray and any memory card so trapped water can escape.
• Wipe the outside and hold the phone with the ports facing down so liquid drains out rather than in.
• Get it to a technician the same day if you can. Ultrasonic cleaning works best before corrosion sets in.

Skip the rice

Rice absorbs ambient humidity slowly and does almost nothing for liquid already inside a sealed phone. Worse, starch dust gets into the ports. The delay it causes — people often leave a phone in rice for two days — is usually what makes the difference between a repairable board and a dead one.

Also skip the hairdryer

Heat drives moisture further into the device and can warp adhesives, seals and the battery. A hairdryer on a wet phone often turns a cleanable problem into a screen and battery replacement.

What about water-resistant phones?

An IP68 rating is tested with clean, still water under lab conditions on a new device. Seals degrade with age, drops and previous repairs, and the rating covers nothing about salt water, soft drinks or soap — all of which are far more corrosive than tap water. Treat any submersion as worth checking, whatever the rating says.

What a repair actually involves

A proper liquid-damage service means opening the device, disconnecting the battery, and cleaning the board — not just drying the outside. Where components have already corroded, they may need to be replaced individually. We'll tell you honestly after inspection whether the device is worth repairing, and what it will cost, before doing any work.