Water Damage/Factory Reset?

[Dlegale90]

I was camping this weekend, and on Saturday the tent leaked. My phone (Samsung Galaxy Stellar) got soaked. The phone would turn on, and the only difference I could see was a decrease in battery. I pulled off the back, and removed the battery and SIM card. Water poured out, and so I put it in a bag to dry off when we got home. After getting home I put in rice (As per the internet's suggestion) and a few hours later, the phone would not function properly. The screen will light up, say "Samsung", and then show a picture of the Android bot with yellow lines spinning through his body. I am then taken to a screen where it says:
"Android System Recovery <3e>

Volume up/down to move highlight: power button to select.

reboot system now
apply update from ADB
apply update from external storage
wipe data/factory reset
wipe cache partition
apply update from cache

(Here it shows a picture of the Android bot with his chest panel opened, and a Red "Caution" triangle above him).

# Manual Mode #
--Appling Multi-CSC...
Applied the CSC-code: VZW
Successfully applied multi-CSC."

If I select the first option, to reboot the phone, I am taken back to this screen. None of the other options will do anything, and I have tried to do all except for Factory Reset. When I press this, I am given several options of "No" and one "Yes-Warning, this cannot be undone!".

I am hesitant to press this button, as I don't want to factory reset the phone. However, it is preferable to the alternative of trying to get a new phone. Would factory resetting the phone fix the damage done? If not, will leaving it in the rice for a few more days work?

 

[lunatic59]

Welcome to Android Forums Dlegale90.

Sorry about your phone. That really stinks. First let me tell you that "a few hours" in a bag of rice is nowhere near long enough. If as you said, water came pouring out of the battery compartment, then at least 72 hours, with the rice changed at least once is necessary. And, unfortunately, the worst thing you can do with a wet phone is to try and turn it on/use it. Even if the initial soaking din't do any real damage, trying to use it with residual moisture can fry internal components.

Take the battery out now. Take out any sim and sd cards, too. Put it in a bag of dry uncooked rice and be patient. If after a few days it still has problems, then it's likely to be a goner.

 

[Dlegale90]

It has been a little over twenty four hours now, but thank you for the help. I will leave it in there for a few more days, and hope that my constant attempts to turn it on did not ruin it.

Thank you for the help

 

[Blackflag4]

Hopefully you didn't do more damage when you turned it back on before letting it completely dry. Some electronics can survive "the drink" , but the key to that is to remove the battery immediately before doing anything. The most damage comes when the power is on because it will naturally cause corrosion to the circuits. Removing the battery doesn't mean it will work, but it can greatly improve the chance of survival. This has happened to me on a couple of occasions and only 1 time did the phone suffer complete failure after drying out for a good week. And not that it's the same thing, but I also have an MP3 player that survived a complete wash cycle in my washing machine. When I remembered it was in my pocket, I stopped the wash, removed it from a full drum of water and let it drain. I then pulled the battery after opening it up, let it dry under a fan for almost 10 days (wanted to be sure), reinstalled the battery and it worked fine. Still works to this day and was bought in 2010. The incident happened in 2012.

I know there is an obvious difference between cellphone and MP3 player, but it's still a circuit, and the timing between power supply removal and restarting it were crucial.

 

[mikedt]

Hopefully you didn't do more damage when you turned it back on before letting it completely dry. Some electronics can survive "the drink" , but the key to that is to remove the battery immediately before doing anything. The most damage comes when the power is on because it will naturally cause corrosion to the circuits. Removing the battery doesn't mean it will work, but it can greatly improve the chance of survival. This has happened to me on a couple of occasions and only 1 time did the phone suffer complete failure after drying out for a good week. And not that it's the same thing, but I also have an MP3 player that survived a complete wash cycle in my washing machine. When I remembered it was in my pocket, I stopped the wash, removed it from a full drum of water and let it drain. I then pulled the battery after opening it up, let it dry under a fan for almost 10 days (wanted to be sure), reinstalled the battery and it worked fine. Still works to this day and was bought in 2010. The incident happened in 2012.

I know there is an obvious difference between cellphone and MP3 player, but it's still a circuit, and the timing between power supply removal and restarting it were crucial.

A wash cycle might OK, as long as it ran a rinse cycle there shouldn't be any residue, provided you dried it you end up with a very clean mobile phone or media player, inside and out. The worse thing is probably dropping a phone down an unflushed toilet, because urine is quite corrosive. Rainwater can be corrosive as well, acid rain.

I've heard of people putting PC keyboards into dishwashers without problem, for cleaning and hygiene purposes, but you'd need to ensure it's completely dry before plugging it into the PC.

 

[SiempreTuna]

A couple of years ago, my missus decided she wanted a new iPod, even though her old one was only a year or so old. Turns out, a month or so earlier she'd been using her old iPod in the bath and at one point it had joined her in the water and stopped working

Thing is, when she finally admitted this and showed me the old iPod .. it was working fine.

 

[John Bean]

Water - pure water - doesn't damage electronics at all, it's not a good conductor of electricity.

In real life water has stuff dissolved in it and that's what makes it conductive and/or corrosive - which can damage electronics. Best practice after immersion in "dirty" water of any sort - including rain - is to immediately remove the battery (or at the very least turn it off) and at the earliest opportunity rinse thoroughly in very clean water, preferably distilled. Tap water is better than nothing but avoid bottled drinking water that while nice to drink isn't always nice to electronics because of the tasty impurities it contains.

The good news is that unless the water got really deep into the guts of the device and/or was highly corrosive like (say) sea water then most times it does no real harm once it dries out. I speak from experience - many years ago I worked for a company that used pocket pagers (when mobile phones were the stuff of sci-fi) and I saw hundreds of water damaged devices. Most needed only a clean, a few needed minor component changes and a tiny minority were write-offs.

The write-offs were either from salt water immersion or immersion in erm... human organic effluent. The latter group were routinely written off simply because the engineers wouldn't touch them