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therealmustii

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 16, 2020
11
2
hello everyone,

So last month I dipped my phone in the pool (i.e. not saltwater) for a brief moment and after that nothing happened just wanted to see that IP68 in action. After that I tried taking a video underwater of about 15 seconds long ( a week ago) . In the beginning, there was nothing obvious and everything looked okay but after like 10 minutes the phone's Taptic engine, microphone and the lower speaker had stopped working everything else was working alright. so I took out the sim card and the sim card tray out and left my phone to "dry" in my room. I left my phone to dry for 3 days. when I used it the microphone produced a rather VERY stuttery sound so I thought to myself that it hadn't dried yet, the taptic engine and the speaker had no problem working. The phone works but now it restarts every 2-4 minutes (irregular restarts) but there's something interesting, if I don't use the phone with the display turned off (locked) it wouldn't restart. If I use the phone then it would. I tried HARD resetting the phone and nothing worked (it restarted in the middle of the formatting but then it resumed)

**ONE VERY INTERESTING FACT TO MAKE: i have 2 friends that own Xs' and another that own an Xs Max, they all literally just dipped the phone in the water and all malfunctioned. Coincidence? I guess not, Apple.

So I dug into the phone. I opened the whole phone and unscrewed each screw I saw (don't worry, I organize my screws) The first thing I saw was slight Green rust on the lower portion of the phone, exactly at the Charger port flex cable, right at the metal brackets. The second thing was some red rust (corrosion) Exactly at the screw of the motherboard on top of the Simcard. The third thing was that there was green rust on the Singal cable flex at the lower portion of the phone. No rust found at the upper half portion of the phone. There seemed to be NO rust nor any anomalies found throughout the motherboard itself AT ALL.

At this point, I tried disconnecting every flex cable from the phone EXCEPT for: the battery, the 3 flex cables from the display, power button, just to see which was "causing" the restart problem. After that I booted the phone and entered my passcode. everything thing worked fine but then it restarted AGAIN. So i thought, lets do everything the same but this time disconnecting the power button flex cable. I tried doing that and i got the same result.

Now, I can say that the charger, power button, and all the other flex cables are "okay". Does this mean that the only problem is from the motherboard it self? Can this be a problem with the restart code somehow messed up? What do you think is the most plausible solution? I saw no corrosion AT ALL on the motherboard but that doesn't mean that water didn't cause the whole restart problem, right?

I once say it again, The phone only restarts if i use it. If i leave it on the lock screen with the display turned off (locked) it DOES NOT restart.
 
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Lekro

macrumors 6502a
Mar 23, 2019
564
295
You can see only 1 layer of the motherboard and even that is covered with shields.

The motherboard is sandwiched together with 2 layers and the weakness of the X XS XS Max and above is that water can find its way in between the two layers. You saw corrosion on top of a motherboard screw, clear sign.
 

therealmustii

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 16, 2020
11
2
You can see only 1 layer of the motherboard and even that is covered with shields.

The motherboard is sandwiched together with 2 layers and the weakness of the X XS XS Max and above is that water can find its way in between the two layers. You saw corrosion on top of a motherboard screw, clear sign.
I saw corrosion on the screw itself but not on the motherboard itself. I guess it did leak underneath the shields then ??‍♂️
 

BugeyeSTI

macrumors 604
Aug 19, 2017
7,244
9,089
Arizona/Illinois
I saw corrosion on the screw itself but not on the motherboard itself. I guess it did leak underneath the shields then ??‍♂️
As @Lekro said the motherboard is two layers stacked and soldered together.. There is no way to know if water has caused corrosion between the boards without de-soldering them for inspection.. From your description I'd say the phone is not going to recover..
 

JPack

macrumors G5
Mar 27, 2017
13,568
26,262
Many pools have chemicals to lower the surface tension of water to reduce insects. If that’s the case, water will enter your iPhone through the mesh grills. Apple only tests water resistance against pure water.
 
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