Water Damaged Phone - black screen

[gooni]

tried, but no success. screen brightness is at max. still black screen, but generally responsive

[Alex.A]

Did you contact a #fairphoneangel? They might have a spare screen they could lend you for a test, or other spare parts.
Otherwise you might want to check for a topic in #participate:local to ckeck if there aren’t #localcommunities in your region. Or you could ask if someone couldn’t help you test a display.
At least you’d be fixed if the issue is with the display module.
Otherwise you might want to check if the aren’t any display offers in #market:offer that are cheaper.

And if not already done I’d advise you to backup your data as much as possible, your phone might die for good in a few days/weeks/months.

[Wanis]

Hello,

I have had an incident today where my phone got wet while I tried to save my dog who jumped in a frozen river and couldn’t come back ashore (true story).
Basically I did not think about my phone right away, and after coming back home and putting everything to dry, I realized that it had gotten wet and wouldn’t turn on anymore.
After drying it for some time, I tried to turn it on again but it still wouldn’t.
The behavior is odd and I’ve read some of it up here in this discussion: it’s vibrating as soon as the battery is put in, the charging light goes blue and the flashlight either flashes or stays constantly on if put on a charger.
I opened it up completely, there was still some water inside. I removed every module, made sure that every bit was dry and replace each module by a spare one. Same result unfortunately.
I will leave it overnight to dry longer, all major parts removed, but I am afraid that the motherboard is dead.

My big question is: if it’s completely dead, can I return it to retrieve the data at least? Some of it is on an SD card but some of it is in the phone memory.

Thank you,
Wanis

PS: the morality is “Save your dog or save the planet, you can’t save both” (JK of course)

[anon9989719]

@Wanis

After drying it for some time, I tried to turn it on again but it still wouldn’t.

There is always a tendency to turn the phone on to see if it is working, but the battery can discharge through avenues it was not designed to and burn out some components.

• Phone’s should never be turned on once wet, they must be dismantled and dried it a good flow of air
• If the water was salty or dirty then the parts need flapping around in ideally distilled water to remove any salt or particles.
• Once ‘cleaned’ , if you think it necessary, and shaken dry and left in an air flow you can use isopropyl alcohol to draw out some water from accessible areas, like around the contacts
• As you will have voided any warranty you can also dismantle the modules somewhat for better cleaning
• It can take well over 24 hours to dry the innards of the modules

So before you buy any replacement parts you really have to dry it thoroughly.

There are many topics on the details:

Here’s some detail on the case where my daughter dropped it in the toilet, but a) it was for a brief moment and b) she took ages drying it before turning on.

The red square indicates water ingress

How “waterproof” is the FP3? IP Rating

Here is another image: My daughter dropped her phone in the toilet. It was only in the water for a couple of seconds. After drying for a couple of days it has been working for 7 months since. However as I now have the phone I’ve dismantled it as i am inquisitive. Here is an image showing the bottom module and a ‘red’ square [red]

You can dismantle the modules, once you see a red square as the warranty is void.

Generally fo dismantling see

Fairphone 3 Teardown

and some detail on the top and bottom modules

FP3 Bottom & Top module breakdown

Hi. Images below taken with an FP3+ I have a defunct F3 that I disassembled to see if I could fix it; No luck; but whilst at it I thought I’d take a look at the bottom module as one issue was that it wouldn’t charge. The bottom module can be prised open, it has four small latches, two stainless steel and two plastic, so be careful. I opened the steel one first. Here is the inside of the two halves of the surround. Centre is the slot for the USB C port. The shiny B98CBC is probably the vibrato…

Cleaning all the contacts once wet and separated is a bit tedious see this about the contacts between the core module shield and the display

Fairphone 3+ does not power on

Yes sadly your problem form the start didn’t seem like a battery issue. Regarding the internal connections have you tried cleaning the earthing contacts between the display and core module. The ‘solder’ contacts outlined in red on the display. [display_module] For more mention of these contacts see, but they are outlined in blue in that topic

It can take a while to get any moisture from between the actual screen, glass etc.

Try and read up in the topics mentioned and search for more to give yourself an idea of what is possible.

If you still can’t get the phone to display see if you have a fairphoneangel near you that may assist.

[Wanis]

Hi Amoun,

Thanks for your reply.
I did make the mistake of trying to turn it on before opening it thoroughly and drying it completely. I was in a “stress” situation as I am leaving to the countryside and I do need my phone to work for professional reasons (I have a second-hand phone just in case, but it’s old + the Android version is outdated + some modules are defective => so it’s important for me to have a functional Fairphone).

I am going to try everyhting but I can’t contact a Fairphone Angel, as I live in Iceland. Maybe I could become one over here someday, if a community grows

However, I am afraid that the motherboard (or microprocessor - whichever name fits better) is defective. So my main question is: is it possible to retrieve the data if the phone firmware/operating system itself is dead?
I would just like to be one step ahead and know my options in this potential case… Should I start looking into buying a new phone, send this one for repair, etc.
I have all the spare parts here. It’s no problem in that regard.

Thanks,
Wanis

[anon9989719]

No easy and cheap way to retrieve data, let’s hope once dried and cleaned etc. after a couple of days it works. Hopefully you had an SD card formatted as Portable that you stored things like images, unless you use a ‘cloud’

Reading out internal memory on FP3

Someone found this… https://www.conrad.de/de/service/services/data-recovery.html Hier kostet die Datenrettung von einem defekten Smartphone ab 380 Euro Or this Not sure if anyone ever used it, so no experience or recommendation.

[Wanis]

OK thank you Amoun.

So if I understand correctly, Fairphone would not be able to retrieve the data if I sent the phone back?
Could I still send it back to recycle some of the parts?

Thank you

[anon9989719]

Hi

Fairphone will not retrieve data or recycle parts.

The best in terms of recycling is to offer/send it to a #fairphoneangel

All the best

[BertG]

There are always professional services for recovering data.
But - according to what I have heard/read - they are quite expensive.
In Iceland I have found by a brief search Data Recovery Reykjavík, Iceland Service (Really no thorough search; so there might be more.)

I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you, but if drying the phone for a few days as described by @anon9989719 does not work, you could give this a try, if the data is really valuable for you. At least you might ask for an estimate regarding the possible costs.

[Wanis]

Thank you guys Fingers crossed, I have no touched it for about a week as I was travelling and it is all disassembled. We’ll see this week if it helped.

[Wanis]

By the way, if it is dead, I would like to buy a secondhand FP3+ from a FPangel in BE. Would that be possible?
Which is the best forum/topic to ask for that?

[anon9989719]

Use the following category to place an add, and also direct it to an FPangel in BE if you think that may help, but there’s not much chance of an angel having one, but then you could be lucky.

Search

https://angels.fairphone.community/

brussels@fairphone.community

ghent@fairphone.community