iPhone dropped in water in Bali: what to do in the first hour

The first five minutes

1. Switch it off and leave it off. If the screen no longer responds, do not fight it — just stop pressing buttons.
2. Do not charge it. Current running through wet contacts is what turns a wet phone into a corroded one.
3. Take off the case and pull out the SIM tray if your model has one, so the water has a way out.
4. Wipe it dry on the outside and keep it with the charging port facing down.
5. Bring it in the same day. Corrosion does not wait for the phone to dry.

What makes it worse

• Rice. It does not pull water out from under the screen or off the board, and its dust ends up in the charging port. Apple itself advises against it.
• A hair dryer or the sun on the dashboard. Heat pushes moisture deeper and softens the glue that holds the screen.
• Switching it on “just to check”. A phone that boots with water inside is a phone with a short circuit in progress.
• Waiting a few days to see. By the time it dries on its own, the salt and minerals the water left behind have already started on the contacts.

Ocean, pool or waterfall — it is not the same water

Sea water is the worst case. Salt conducts electricity and eats metal, and when the water dries the salt stays on the board as crystals. A phone that went into the surf needs opening the same day, even if it looks fine.

Pool water carries chlorine, which is corrosive too, only slower. Fresh water — a waterfall, a river, rain — is the kindest of the three, but it still carries minerals and silt and it still shorts a board that has power on it.

And the water-resistance rating does not change any of this. It is tested in still fresh water on a new phone. Seals age, a drop or an earlier repair breaks them, and no rating was ever about salt water or a wave.

What we do with a water-damaged iPhone

We open the phone, disconnect the battery and look at what the water reached. The board is cleaned of salt and corrosion, and whatever the water has killed is replaced — at component level under a microscope when it comes to that.

Diagnostics are free and you get the answer the same day: what is damaged, what it costs, and whether it is worth doing. We start only after you agree to the price. The repair is covered by our one-month warranty on the parts we fitted and the work we did.

If the phone cannot be saved

Sometimes the honest answer is that the phone is gone. Your photos are a separate question: if the memory chip survived, we get the data out even when the phone itself is past saving. We cannot promise it in advance — but it is worth asking before you write the phone off.

Spilled a drink on a laptop instead? See what to do when a MacBook gets wet.