water damaged devices (retrieving data)

[Big Jim]

Is there any trick I should be aware of ?

I have a water damaged phone in at the minute which was subjected to the "rice trick"
unfortunately as the rice trick is largely useless by the time it got to us the board is heavily corroded. the phone is recognised by windows but not enough to get data off it.
I have cleaned the bits of the circuit board I can see with alcohol, the phone vibrates when you turn it on but no display and nothing much happens in windows.

parts of the problem is the metal heatshields/coverplate that are soldered to the board, I can't get at or see underneath those and I suspect there is further corrosion under those as well.


As usual customers "life" is on this phone and they don't have a backup. (don't know how)

Anything I can try to get this working now ?

 

[raiko]

Try clean all the motherboard with some electronic cleaner (I use Wuerth Cleaner, works well) and try get data with phone software (Sony, Samsung etc windows software)

 

[Krynn72]

If its an iPhone, and the data is worth money to the customer, don't **** with it and send it to someone like www.mendonipadrehab.com. Its what she does.

If its an android phone, there may be another microsoldering expert somewhere that specializes on android devices, but I don't know one.

 

[Markverhyden]

All of those desiccant "tricks" are useless. They do not dry off the device quickly enough.

 

[fencepost]

The first thing I'd investigate is whether there's a bunch of stuff backed up where the customer doesn't know about the backups. This is particularly the case if "customer's life" means "ZOMG All My Pictures and Contacts and Calendar Are Gone!" Heck, if it's an Android device contacts and such will have auto-restored to the replacement if the same Google account was used.

Notable possibilities:

• iCloud for whatever automatically backs up there (if anything - contacts at least?)
  
• Dropbox (generally has automatic photo upload, check Camera Roll)
  
• OneDrive/SkyDrive (not sure if camera upload is automatic or not, but probably)
  
• Google Drive (not sure if camera upload is automatic or not, but I think it was particularly during the push for Google+)
• Google+ for that matter - at one point it auto-uploaded photos as private and you could go in and share them later
  
• Facebook (I believe if you have it installed and logged in it auto-uploads your photos as private photos unless you turn that off)
• GMail for contacts if Android. Whatever the Apple ecosystem equivalent is for iPhone.
• If Android (or iPhone?), check http://my.lookout.com - at least at one point, Lookout mobile antivirus also did automatic backups of contacts, and looking now it appears that even without their "Premium" version it may still do so (along with 90 days of call logs). Not sure if that requires just having it preinstalled on the phone by the carrier or if you actually have to sign into that preinstalled one. Photo backup in that one is a "Premium" feature. Lookout has apps for both platforms.
  
• I'm not sure that AVG's security software does the same - looking at avgmobilation.com it looks like it's just device locating, remote wipe, etc.
• Ebooks? Were they purchased through Amazon? Then they're in the Kindle library, or the B&N equivalent, or iTunes, or Google Play for those respective stores.
• Text messages and the like? Might be out of luck, but I'm honestly not entirely sure what the h*ll goes on with that these days between iMessage, Google's various Hangouts/Messaging/Wave/WTF attempts and of course people jumping to things like WhatsApp, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger.

Basically for a non-savvy user I suspect there's not a lot that would be on the device that couldn't be recovered from elsewhere.

 

[fencepost]

All of those desiccant "tricks" are useless. They do not dry off the device quickly enough.

Actually you might be able to save something if you have actual dessicant on-hand and ready to try, apparently you can buy those silica dessicant balls at craft stores - they're used for drying flowers, etc. Possibly worth having on-hand if you have a pool, not sure about for anything else.

 

[Markverhyden]

Even the real thing is very limited in it's ability to absorb fluid. They are meant to absorb vapor. Had to deal with that stuff all of the time when I was working on drilling rigs with some of our instruments like chromatographs.

Engineers I worked with always said the best way to clean PCB's is to use certain types of solvents, compressed DRY air, and then a heated vacuum type chamber.

 

[Big Jim]

I'm pretty sure its dead to be fair.

I'm going to write a blog on facebook over the next week I think explaining a few things to people and why the rice trick doesn't actually work.

 

[NviGate Systems]

I have an ultrasonic cleaner and use a cleaning fluid to get rid of junk. But the real issue is cleaning is not enough, you need to resolder broken and corroded connections.

 

[gadgetfixup]

Water is better than rice for preserving a phone until it can be dried out correctly. If you write an article be sure to let people know water works better than rice.

Pull the battery if it's removable, submerge and put a lid on the container to keep it submerged.

 

[NviGate Systems]

Water is better than rice for preserving a phone until it can be dried out correctly. If you write an article be sure to let people know water works better than rice.

Pull the battery if it's removable, submerge and put a lid on the container to keep it submerged.

Data recovery experts have told me the same for flood damaged HDD.

 

[Krynn72]

Actually you might be able to save something if you have actual dessicant on-hand and ready to try, apparently you can buy those silica dessicant balls at craft stores - they're used for drying flowers, etc. Possibly worth having on-hand if you have a pool, not sure about for anything else.

Dessicant will never save a phone. If someone claims a dessicant did save their phone, then in truth they would have been equally as successful by doing literally nothing and letting it dry naturally. It also will lure people into a false sense of security, in thinking their phone is fine now. However it is likely that corrosion will continue to occur even with no water left in it, and many a device has failed due to that very liquid damage days, weeks, or months after turning the phone on after the initial incident.

The real damage caused by liquid is either instantaneous (immediately blowing out the main power lines or backlight lines usually, but could be killing any component), or it comes from the corrosive elements in the water meeting the electricity and corroding the pathways. When the water evaporates, the corrosive material remains, and thus the problem remains.

Just as an aside water is actually non conductive. If you stick electronics in pure h2o they will be totally fine and working even if they're fully submerged and the electronics exposed. It's those minerals and other materials that make the water we encounter in the real world conduct electricity. So once you know that, it should be obvious that evaporating the water does nothing to help electronics.

http://mendonipadrehab.com/entries/general/rice-rant

 

[Diggs]

Water is better than rice for preserving a phone until it can be dried out correctly. If you write an article be sure to let people know water works better than rice.

Pull the battery if it's removable, submerge and put a lid on the container to keep it submerged.

If you could add the word "distilled" to the water it would be even better. Many still have distilled water around for their irons. Distilled water is non-conductive, tap water is not.

 

[fencepost]

"Oh, I figured I'd just keep it in the pool water, since that's what it fell into."

Still, better than the toilet.....

 

[Markverhyden]

If you could add the word "distilled" to the water it would be even better. Many still have distilled water around for their irons. Distilled water is non-conductive, tap water is not.

Add de-ionized as well.

 

[HCHTech]

water works better than rice.

I just got this image of someone walking into an apple store with their phone in a tupperware container full of water. haha. I'll bet they've seen stranger things (please don't tell me what they are, though).

 

[fencepost]

"I don't even need to check the water damage sensors to tell you that this, this is not covered in any way shape or form."

 

[Galdorf]

All of those desiccant "tricks" are useless. They do not dry off the device quickly enough.

I saw this on MacGyver tried it actually works i get lots of those electronic silica gel packs lying around in a container take 4 or 5 toss it in a seal-able sandwich bag toss the phone in and seal the bag more packs you put in faster it dries.

I have tried this trick many times with laptop hard drives from water damage insurance claims never had a problem yet.