Can I retrieve photos from a water damaged iPhone?
Can I retrieve photos from a water damaged iPhone?
My iPhone recently spent time in saltwater. I left it alone for a week to dry out, and then I tried to turn it on. Initially, the Apple symbol appeared and it seemed to be working, but moments later it turn off and hasn't turned on since. I opened it up and the internals are badly corroded, but I still want to try and retrieve my photos from the phone.
"oldturkey is spot on about where your photo's are stored. You'll need to take the phone apart (display, logic board, battery), clean the board and connectors with isopropyl alcohol, and use a soft brush to lift any corrosion off the parts. Do this and you have some chance of getting your pictures off the phone. Get a new battery, clean your Dock port and try again with connection to PC. With any luck your problem is only a dead battery (the number one thing to go kaput in phones with water damage). Good luck!
Choose the guide for replacing the logic board on an iPhone 3gs (under the photo of the phone and then use these guides to help you Repairing iPhone Liquid Damage
"iFixit's ""Accepted Answer"" by pollytintop is right on target!
Steve's original problem mirrors my recent experience with an iPhone 4S that ""took a look"" in a five foot deep salt water filter. It took me almost a half hour to fish it out, and by that time it had begun its ""flashlight death spiral."" Sad to see, sadder still when I thought about how long ago it was that I backed up those photos… All I could think to do was throw it, still glowing and un-turn-offable, into fresh water. Six hours later I dried it off and sealed it into a large jar with rice.
After six days of letting the rice work it's magic I used iFixit's ""Liberation Kit"" to replace my iPhone's trashed battery with one from iFixit. [Note: This option is a tad pricier than other replacement options, but over the years iFixit has proven to ""give good weight"" and I feel good when I am able to support their efforts to fix-and-not-trash the world around us.] After the 4S was buttoned back up (with those Philips head screws) I plugged it into a charger, just because. Six hours later I connected the iPhone to my computer and, except for the lack of ANYthing on the display, the computer treated this tortured object as if it was a normal, working iPhone. Jaw dropping concept, that, and something only surpassed by the fact that when iPhoto opened up it located my photos and allowed me to download what I had neglected to back up. That was the good news. Everything else about the 4S, with its new battery, was totally compromised and there was nothing I could do to get anything to show up on the display.
Here is where it gets marginally interesting. Figuring I now had an expensive paperweight on my hands I decided to go back in to swap the original, damaged, battery for that new iFixit battery (and swap out the Philips head screws for Apple's originals). Although these things could not pull the 4S back from the brink, this stuff might be useful if the battery on my replacement iPhone (Glyde.com) goes south. Then, just because, I reconnected the dried out phone, with it original battery, to my computer. The computer no longer recognized the 4S as anything.
Bottomline: Putting a replacement battery into a ""totaled"" iPhone made it act, just enough, like an object that should be able to give up something important that I wished I had properly backed up. Other than that, this exercise was a bit of a fool's errand. But if temporarily introducing a fresh battery into a dead iPhone could possibly pull back photos from the brink, it just might be worth a shot."
The photo's amongst other things are stored on the NAND memory. There is not really a practical way of retrieving your pictures. It can be done with a NAND memory reader, but it will take a lot of money to either build one, or to have it done through a recovery service. If you have restored your iPhone within the recent past of its life, the images will be backed up on your computer. Sorry, wish I had better news for you. You can check on here for more info.
you can not use it after some water may drop in the phone. You may not recover the photos from iPhone but if you do backup before, you can recover the photos from the iTunes backup.
"Apple does not repair iPhones, but will replace the entire iPhone for a flat fee; see the tutorials here to know more about iPhone Data Recovery
There are independent iPhone repair services that may be able to replace the screen for less. Do a web search for ""iPhone repair"". Note, though, that if you elect to have the iPhone serviced by an unauthorized shop, all further support from Apple will be voided.
