iPhone 5s Water Damage - From several months ago?

[The Critic]

Hey folks,

My sister has a 5s that was exposed to water several months ago.

The phone was working fine (except for the battery) until last week. Last week, the home button stopped working.

I took the phone into the Apple Store and they found a bad connection at the display assembly. The techs reseated the connector and the home button works again. They did warn of future issues due to the water damage.

Given the amount of time that has elapsed since the water damage occurred, what are my options at this point?

1) Out of warranty replacement for $270

2) Replace the battery and keep my fingers crossed that the phone stays functional.

3) Send it to an iPhone repair shop, who claims that they can "clean off the corrosion."

Thoughts?

Thanks.

 

[Applejuiced]

Corrosion is very hard to get rid off. Could be fine for a little while and then random things can start having problems and failing.
I'd get it replaced.

 

[sjinsjca]

You can expect things to continue to go wonky with this phone. Unless that repair place is willing to guarantee its work for a significant period of time, I'd discount their claim that they can repair it.

If it's a subsidized unit your carrier allows you to upgrade before too long, I'd personally just nurse it along until then, and then upgrade to a new model.

But, it could fail all-of-a-sudden, so if it's a mission-critical tool, you might want to replace it early:

See, something of the sort happened to my wife's phone after a brief accidental immersion. We did the baggie-of-dried-rice trick overnight, and it seemed to work, though a couple of functions were maybe a little off-key after its dunking. Then she went on a big international trip ...and the phone unceremoniously died in the middle of that. Fortunately its last act before expiring was to upload all her irreplaceable travel photos to iCloud... which we happily discovered when we restored a new phone from her iCloud backup. She sure was happy about that.