Water Damage Repair: Part Two

Water damage is a bitch. And it's a returning bitch in that: once I decided I got rid of salts deposits and sufficiently cleaned my Samsung Skyrocket's insides (see my previous article), all it took to strike again was 36 hours of high atmospheric humidity and salty drizzle -- I live 800 metres from Pacific Ocean.

My Skyrocket didn't die though, it just started to stutter on video playback. This means that two cleaning sessions described in my previous article weren't enough, and a more serious approach is needed.

My tools for this enhanced cleaning are pictured above, from left to right: ordinary tooth brush, short hog hair brush, screwdriver, dentist's bloody pick, tweezers, Phillips screwdriver #1, engraver's needle, another screwdriver, blade, nail file, pencil flashlight. 10x loupe and cotton swabs above. What is omitted from this picture is quite powerful hairdryer, 95% ethanol (if the price is of no problem it better be of optical grade 95.63%, an azeotropic solution) and branded automotive electric contact cleaner of this type:


Well, I'm not fooling myself: even after these two extensive cleaning and drying sessions the residual hygroscopic salts deposits may act up again -- say, in rainy weather.

Next step would be using no less than an ultrasonic bath.

(Skyrocket's 480x800 screen is nothing to write mom about these day, but its dual-core Snapdragon APQ8060 is quite a nice media chip to run XBMC on)

Phone Water Damage Repairs

This is a work in progress, most certainly. There are plenty of reports that water damaged phones can't be revived for whatever reason. So far, I have 3 phones from completely different sources (think toilet, kitchen sink, shower, LOL) that I was lucky enough to make work just like before that fatal dive. They will certainly work even better, I'd say, after I put CM 10.1/Jelly Bean on them.

On my picture above, it's dead as door nail. Hence the purchase price of $20. A wager, sort of.

Here goes the procedure:

WARNING! My method is a combination of several methods described in some instructional videos, plus the additions of what was omitted in them. These omissions include but not limited to, exact formulas for treatment of hardness salts deposits.

Sure, you might be lucky dropping your phone in a reservoir with distilled or very soft water: after recommended thorough and prolonged drying your device in dried crushed rice, your phone is usually comes out clean, dry and works properly.

Chances are though that your bath for your phone involves an ordinary tap (hard) water, or even sea water. Both types of water (so called "sweet" water and salted water) leave deposits that both hard to remove and may act as parasitic shorts disrupting normal functioning of the phone.

In such cases, a combined approach to repair is recommended. Namely, a mechanical brushing off salt deposits with a short haired, hard (art "hog hair") brush which is wetted in a domestic cleaner that works against lime, calcium and (maybe) rust in toilets and such. However, wetting affected areas with such a cleaner will render the hardness salts deposit film transparent and almost invisible, so there must be a period of setting aside the phone  for drying after such brushing. A cotton swabs dipped in 95 % alcohol may shorten this drying period. Use of alcohol can also be preferred because of it picking up residual hardness salts deposits and chemicals (usually conductive electrolytes no better than hardness salts themselves) used in that cleaner.

Now, alcohol is no better solvent of hardness salts deposits than water. Then, much stronger (concentrated) professional lime cleaners can be way too strong and damage connectors. So, if you follow me, the whole procedure is mostly about brushing and as such it better be repeated several times. In especially tough spots, a careful work with dentist's scraper might be needed. Then, plenty of surface must be treated, both sides:

In my case, it took 2 attempts of brushing with two hours of drying between them. Second brushing was performed with dry clean brush. All in all, in five hours, my Samsung Skyrocket have started to charge its long dead battery.

After the rescue, we have a nice AT&T Samsung Galaxy S2 running pretty fast Qualcomm's Snapdragon APQ8960 at 1500 MHz on a decent 4.5" 800x480 SAMOLED Plus screen.

 It's alive now! Flat battery was expected, sure.

Previous owner has set a locking pattern before going to swim with this phone. It's a nuisance, but as I don't need to know any data dear to that guy I just rebooted into stock CWM (Vol- + Home + Power) and wiped the device clean.

 We're in the open. It's stock Android 4.0.4 with usual AT&T bloat. Next project will be replacing this broken LCD screen on a Sprint Samsung Epic Touch:

But it's a completely different story, and much more expensive one. The procedure is much more easier to follow though.

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