It happens the same way every summer. A phone slides out of a pocket on a boat at Folsom Lake. Someone reaches for a photo at the edge of the American River. A tablet goes in the pool at a birthday party in Vacaville. One second of contact with water, and a device that cost several hundred dollars is suddenly a paperweight.
Here is the part most people get wrong: what you do in the first hour matters more than almost anything else. Not the model of phone, not how deep it went, not even how long it was under. The first hour.
This guide covers exactly what to do, what to avoid, and why the advice your friend gives you is probably going to cost you your device.
Water resistance is not waterproof — and it wears out
Most modern phones carry an IP rating, and people read that as a guarantee. It is not.
Those ratings are earned in a lab, on a brand-new device, in still fresh water at a controlled depth for a controlled time. Your phone is not a new device in a lab. Every drop it has taken has stressed the seals. Every hot day has softened the adhesive holding it together. If the screen has ever been replaced, the seal is only as good as the work that was done.
Then there is what the water actually is. Lake and river water carries silt and organic matter. Pool water carries chlorine. Salt water is the most destructive of all. IP ratings are tested with clean fresh water — none of the water your phone is likely to fall into behaves the same way.
So a phone rated for water can absolutely be killed by water. We see it constantly.
What to do in the first hour
- Get it out and power it off immediately. Do not check whether it still works. Do not take a photo to send to a friend. Electricity plus water is what destroys circuits, so cutting the power is the single most valuable thing you can do.
- Do not plug it in. Not to charge, not to a computer, not to anything. Applying power to a wet board is how a recoverable phone becomes an unrecoverable one.
- Remove the case, the SIM tray and any memory card. Open every door you can. Cases trap water against the body.
- Dry the outside and gently shake water out of the ports with the ports facing down. Do not blast it with compressed air, which pushes water further inside.
- Leave it off and bring it in. Every hour that passes, corrosion spreads further across the board.
That last point is the one people underestimate. Water damage is not a single event — it is an ongoing chemical process. Minerals and contaminants left behind start corroding connections immediately and keep going for days. A device brought in the same day has dramatically better odds than the same device brought in a week later.
The rice myth, and three other things that make it worse
Rice does not work
This is the most persistent piece of bad advice in consumer tech. Rice is not a desiccant in any meaningful sense. It absorbs a small amount of ambient humidity very slowly, and it does nothing at all for liquid sitting on a circuit board inside a sealed housing.
What rice really does is convince you the problem is being handled while corrosion quietly spreads for three days. It also leaves starch and dust in your ports. The phones that “survived the rice” survived despite it, not because of it.
Do not use a hairdryer or put it in the oven
Heat drives moisture deeper into the device, can warp components, and risks damaging a battery that is already in a compromised state. A swollen or punctured lithium battery is a genuine fire hazard.
Do not put it in the freezer
This one circulates online periodically. Freezing creates condensation as the device warms back up, so you end up with more moisture inside than you started with, in more places.
Do not keep turning it on to check
Every attempt to power up a wet device sends current across corroded traces. People often destroy a phone that a technician could have saved, purely by testing it repeatedly over an afternoon.
What actually fixes a water damaged device
Proper water damage treatment is a bench job. The device is opened, the battery is disconnected first, and the board is inspected under magnification for corrosion and for the liquid contact indicators. The board is then cleaned — usually in an ultrasonic bath with the right solution — to remove corrosion and mineral residue that simple drying leaves behind.
After cleaning and drying, components get tested individually. Sometimes the fix ends there. Sometimes a specific part has failed and needs replacing — commonly the battery, the charging port, or the display. Occasionally the damage is genuinely beyond economic repair, and the honest answer is that it is not worth your money.
We offer free in-house diagnostics, so finding out which of those three you are looking at does not cost you anything. See our water damage repair page for what the process covers.
It is not just phones
Summer around Folsom Lake, Lake Natoma and the American River claims a lot more than phones.
- GoPro cameras — housings fail, and seals degrade with age and sunscreen. A flooded GoPro often has a recoverable board if it comes in fast.
- Drones — a water landing is survivable surprisingly often, if the battery comes out immediately and it is not powered on again.
- iPads and tablets — poolside casualties, and their larger boards mean corrosion has more to spread across.
- Laptops and MacBooks — a drink spill is the classic. Power off, unplug, turn it upside down like a tent, and bring it in.
- Game consoles — less common, but a knocked-over drink into the vents does real damage.
We also handle water damage on iPhones and Android phones of every make.
Protect your data before anything else
If your device powers on at all after getting wet, and you have not yet backed it up, that window may be short. Get your photos off it the moment you can safely do so.
Better still, set up automatic backup now, before anything happens. The single most upsetting conversation we have is not about a phone that cannot be fixed — it is about a phone that cannot be fixed and held the only copy of someone’s photos.
If the device is already dead and the data matters, say so when you bring it in. Data recovery changes the priorities of the repair, and it is worth telling us up front.
How to avoid the whole problem
- Use a real dry bag on the water. A proper sealed pouch costs very little and works. A sandwich bag does not.
- Assume an older phone has no water resistance left. If your device is two or three years old, or has had a screen replaced, treat it as unsealed.
- Keep it away from the edge. Most drops we see happen from a lap on a boat, a pool ledge, or a back pocket.
- Rinse and dry after salt water or chlorine exposure — even if the device seems fine.
- Back up automatically. Cloud backup turns a disaster into an inconvenience.
Bring it in — the sooner the better
We have stores in Folsom and Vacaville, California, and in Gresham, Oregon, and all locations are open six days a week. You do not need an appointment — walk in. Diagnostics are free, you get a price before any work starts, and repairs are backed by our 100-day parts warranty.
If you are not close to a store, we also offer mail-in repairs, though with liquid damage specifically, speed matters so much that getting to a store the same day is usually the better call.
Call us on (800) 619-6924, get an instant quote, or find your nearest shop on our locations page.
Frequently asked questions
My phone got wet but it still works fine. Do I need to do anything?
Yes. A device that survived the initial contact can still fail weeks later as corrosion develops. A free diagnostic now is much cheaper than a board failure in a month.
How long do I have before it is too late?
There is no hard cutoff, but the odds drop steadily with time. Same day is best. After a week, corrosion has usually done meaningful damage. We will still look at it — we just cannot promise as much.
Does water damage void my manufacturer warranty?
Usually, yes. Liquid damage is typically excluded from standard manufacturer warranties, and most devices have internal indicators that show it. That is a large part of why third-party repair exists.
Can you recover my photos if the phone will not turn on?
Often, yes, but it depends on the condition of the storage. Tell us data recovery is the priority when you drop it off so we approach the repair accordingly.
How much does water damage repair cost?
It depends entirely on what the diagnostic finds — cleaning alone is very different from a board with failed components. The diagnostic is free and you get the price before we start.
Should I just buy a new phone instead?
Sometimes. If the damage is severe on an older device, replacement can be the sensible choice. We will tell you honestly when that is the case rather than sell you a repair that is not worth it.
