Washing machine - phone help

[hopeturtle7]

Hello,

 

I have a Xiaomi Redmi Note 4s and i accidently left it in the washer, the phone had no battery and was turned off before washing. So when I took it out, i placed it in a bag of rice for about a week to dry off. Then i charged it for a bit and the battery was getting warm (like it usually does), but the little light at the top of the phone wasn't showing and the phone still doesn't start.

 

I have so many photos of my dead dog on it and i want to get them back. Also all my contacts are on that phone. I am going to the hardware shop tomorrow for some isopropyl alcohol and take the battery out somehow. I don't really have a lot of money to take it to the repair shop. Is there a way for me to get my photos back?

 

~Thanks~

 

[Canada EH]

5 minutes ago, hopeturtle7 said:

accidently left it in the washer,

Take it to a real professional cell phone repair company!

 

Otherwise you'll need a CSI type to grab those images that you did not backup.

 

Otherwise you are S.O.L.

 

Sorry

[hopeturtle7]

Do you think its worth soaking the phone in isopropyl to get rid of the detergent and trying again or have i already fried the thing by charging it?

[hopeturtle7]

Yea i think im not going to try and dismantle it, id just soak the whole thing in alcohol and pray. 

[Christophe Corazza]

30 minutes ago, hopeturtle7 said:

i placed it in a bag of rice

 

Rice is good to eat but does nothing to fix the problems caused by a mix of liquids and electronics.

 

31 minutes ago, hopeturtle7 said:

about a week to dry off

 

If you did not open the phone as much as possible while letting it dry, one week will almost definitely be too short.

 

18 minutes ago, hopeturtle7 said:

soaking the phone in isopropyl

 

For all that's worthy, don't soak the phone in isopropyl alcohol!

Alcohol liquids like methanol, ethanol and propanol are good solvents for different (polymer) components inside your phone.

[hopeturtle7]

Christophe, I did take off the sim card thingy at the side. There is a lot of conflicting information on the web. The rice and isopropyl were recommended on this forum for someones phone that also had water damage. Do you think I should fully charge up my dead phone now and see if it works? Would that make things worst? And like I said before I can't spend $200 to get it repaired, maybe at a later time when im more financially stable, but not currently. I do have an old phone that i'm using so its not too urgent. I just want the photos of my dog. 

[Christophe Corazza]

40 minutes ago, hopeturtle7 said:

I did take off the sim card thingy at the side.

 

Taking off the sim card cover/tray won't allow sufficient air to flow over and through the crevices of your phone's internals.

You should have opened your phone as much as possible, taking off the back, unscrewing most of its internal components etc. After that, you should have placed your phone in a dry area and put an air fan next to it (blowing air over the components). A drying time of at least 1 to 2 weeks would have been reasonable, depending on how well you've managed to dismantle it.

Water seaps into every crevice of your phone and will stay there due to strong capillary forces. The goal of opening your phone and blowing air over it, is to expose every surface, hook and cranny to fresh air. This facilitates the evaporation process.

 

55 minutes ago, hopeturtle7 said:

There is a lot of conflicting information on the web. The rice and isopropyl were recommended on this forum for someones phone that also had water damage.

 

There is indeed very conflicting information on the web, often written down by people that have read that same inaccurate information somewhere else on the internet.

While it is true that you might get lucky rinsing a single electronic component in isopropyl alcohol, it is far more complicated in the case of a complete phone that exists of much more different materials, complicated shapes (crevices) etc.

 

1 hour ago, hopeturtle7 said:

Do you think I should fully charge up my dead phone now and see if it works? Would that make things worst?

 

That will be the worst thing you can do.

Without even looking at your phone, I can assure you that the internals aren't dry at all. Even though regular tap water is actually a "bad" electrical conductor (even though it can kill you), adding an electrolyte like a detergent will increase its conductivity enormously. Therefore, powering on your phone when soapy water is present inside, will definitely make it worse.

 

All you can safely do right now is opening your device as much as possible, unscrewing most of its internals and letting it dry next to an air fan.

[Huntsman]

I would just not touch the phone until you've saved up enough for professional help. in the meantime, did you just so happens to have installed Google Photos on that phone and just so happens to have it automatically back up those pictures?

[Zodiark1593]

On 6/14/2018 at 10:36 AM, hopeturtle7 said:

Christophe, I did take off the sim card thingy at the side. There is a lot of conflicting information on the web. The rice and isopropyl were recommended on this forum for someones phone that also had water damage. Do you think I should fully charge up my dead phone now and see if it works? Would that make things worst? And like I said before I can't spend $200 to get it repaired, maybe at a later time when im more financially stable, but not currently. I do have an old phone that i'm using so its not too urgent. I just want the photos of my dog. 

Alcohol can clean residual water on bare boards, not the entire phone. Even with the water removed, corrosion is likely to have set in anyway at this point, necessitating professional repair. Continued attempts to power the phone on without knowing what damage exist raises the possibility of the data being rendered unrecoverable, so I would recommend not having it connected to any power (battery or otherwise) and set it aside for professional assistance.

 

 

Rice is quite useless for drying phones as the water is inside the casing where the rice will have no impact. To dry out a phone reliably and have a good chance of it working requires disassembly within an hour or so of contact with water (before corrosion does it's thing), preferably much sooner.