iPhone Water Damage & Data Recovery

The IP68 rating on a modern iPhone is a factory figure, not a lifetime guarantee. The adhesive seals degrade with every drop, temperature change and repair, so a three-year-old phone is nothing like as watertight as it was — and salt water and chlorine get past seals that fresh water would not. Apple's warranty does not cover liquid damage on any model, which is where we come in.

What you do in the first hour matters more than anything we do later. Turn it off and leave it off, do not plug it in to see if it charges, and do not put it in rice — rice does nothing about the residue already on the board and the delay lets corrosion spread. Powered circuits plus liquid is what actually kills phones; a wet phone that is switched off stands a far better chance.

Our work is board-level. The board comes out, goes through an ultrasonic clean to lift residue from underneath the shields and chips where it cannot be reached by hand, and then we find and repair what is still failing under a microscope. If the phone cannot be economically saved we will say so plainly — and in that case the priority shifts to your data. Photos, messages and contacts can very often be recovered from a board that will never reliably run as a phone again, and that is usually what people actually came in for.