Touchscreen not responding (FP got wet)

[clemence]

Hi!

My fairphone accidently got wet. After 24 hours of drying (battery and sim card off), I tried to turn it on. It worked fine, I received a call and was able to reply, but the screen didn’t respond very well. I turned it off, took the battery and sim card off, and allowed it to dry for the night. I then tried to turn it on again.

The touchscreen doesn’t respond anymore- at all. I can’t enter my pin number or even turn off the phone without taking the battery off. Is there something I can try to fix it? If not, what spare part should I buy to repair it?

Thanks so much for your help!

[Stefan]

First, you should get your FP totally dried! See this post:

Fairphone got wet

This is a rather old thread, but anyway, for future reference: silica is seriously the best desiccant, but it gets saturated quickly. (No wonder you don’t see any improvement, 6 days or 12 does not make any difference if the stuff is saturated.) My advice: get more of it, and change frequently. Also, if available, get some with a colour change indicator of the degree of saturation. You could also dry the silica in the oven at low temperature for several hours, but this does not make sense for …

Since you state that you turned your phone on again after only 24 hours, it might be that you damaged your phone. But before you take any more measures, try with silica!

[clemence]

Thanks for your help! I bought silica, hopefully I’ll see an improvement. But if not, do you know what part of the phone I should replace? Is it the screen itself, or is it an internal part that controls the screen? Everything seems to work perfectly fine- except the touchscreen that doesn’t respond at all.

[Stefan]

If everything else works, then it’s probably the touch screen, but I don’t want to say anything from the distance.

[clemence]

I understand. Thanks for your help!

[Stefan]

Be sure to post back here when you got something new. I’m interested in hearing about it.

[clemence]

Posting back as promised!
I tried silica as you advised, and turned my phone on after a few days… no change. I sent my phone to the repair center and both the touchscreen and the motherboard had to be changed… :’( Lesson learned, I’ll be super extra careful in the furure!

[Stefan]

I’m sorry to hear this! Unfortunate that you couldn’t save your phone…