Ghostly Samsung S5

[TonyGamer]

Last summer I dropped my Samsung Galaxy S5 into a river, I pulled it out and dried it up, after 1-2 days I took it out and it died on me that night. Now I plugged it into my computer to try and salvage it and it booted back up like normal. Any idea what happened, it's working perfectly like nothing ever happened.

 

[TRS-80]

Sounds like it dried out? Also, you got pretty lucky.

 

[TonyGamer]

I just don't know what happened to it, I couldn't find anything like it online

 

[Dannydet]

You got lucky.
9 times out of 10 they don't come back

 

[Fox Mulder]

Presumably the river was fresh and not salt water, and reasonably free of contaminants that would make the water conductive and/or corrosive. By letting it sit for that long it was able to dry out sufficiently to work again.
If it was salt water and you left it that long you'd probably find just a pile of crumbly white stuff where the phone had been.