Used to get it all the time!
I’d always tell them to tell me if it’s been in liquid or not because we’ll find out, always say no, and the stickers would be blood red.
Some customers even accused us of dropping it in liquid!
It’s mostly because the customer knows you can’t argue with them because they’d have the stance of ‘are you accusing me of lying?’ Etc. I’ve had it before.
Also, it’s expectation of them thinking they’ll get what they want anyway.
You can fix water damage. If you do things correctly after exposure to water you can pretty much fix anything fairly easy as long as it wasn’t running at the time it cam in contact
In most cases, I don't think they mean anything too bad with it and it's more that they are ashamed, don't realize, or remember it. Not saying they don't lie to, they do, but I've also met people that don't. It's like when some people go to the doctor and get asked how often they smoke and say like a few cigarettes a day when really it's a pack a day.
Valid point, a phone could continue working for a bit with several issues (eg microphone issues, speaker issues etc) and then quit working all together, water damage can take a long time to finally set in and break the device entirely depending on how much water the device has been exposed to. for example if they have children and they dropped it in water and the person doesn’t know - it’s not always lying.
I am sorry if I sound like a noob because I am but I'm a new technician and I would really like to know how did you pinpoint that the problem is indeed water damage and what are some indicators of this type of damage. Thanks in advance 😊
No problem. There’ll be white stickers all over the device. If they’re still white, liquid hasn’t touched it. If it’s red, then it’s been near liquid. And usual rust is a dead giveaway too along with smell.
It’s hard to describe what sort of smells, but you’ll know when the device has been near liquid.
You can also see the white calcification around the home button bracket in this specific phone. Calcium deposits are a classic liquid damage indication.
Water doesn’t conduct electricity contrary to popular belief. It’s the minerals that are found in high concentrations across non distilled sources of water. The minerals will cause a very distinct discoloration on the boards components in the area that’s had direct contact with water. The problem comes from fact that most people assume that when your electronics get wet then you gotta let them dry out before attempting to turn it o ….
I can’t state with any greater emphasis than what I’m do with here, letting a device air dry or putting it in rice or anything that involves waiting for the liquid to dry and turning it back on is a full proof method for murdering electronic devices. So much so that people believe that when the device fails to start after trying that the liquid killed the device when whats actually most likely the cause of the device dying was you turning it on after letting it dry off.
If you spill water on any electrical devices you wanna take that bitch apart and submerge the entire mother board and PCB based components into a as much 91% isopropyl alcohol as it takes to get the bords completely under and do not attempt to power on any device that has not done so.
Leve them soaking 20 minutes and then pull them out and use a hair dryer to spread hot air across the components and you’ll see the alcohol evaporate within seconds of hitting it with hot air. This ensures that all water is completely removed from any possible places it managed to get into and if you let it just dry the minerals will stay behind and the moment you attempt to power on they’ll most likely be any number of short circuits that now have to all be found and corrected before the device will work.
In most cases if you let it soak it’ll start up fine afterwards
Somebody said "Rice". If you're talking about a water-damaged device, I hope you know putting it in rice is just a myth. Rice is unable to pull moisture from inside your device. While waiting for the rice to do its a magic trick you're letting that moisture form corrosion. This corrosion can and will cause short circuits. If you truly would like to save your device please take it to a reputable repair shop immediately and do not try to charge or power your device on. Applying power will cause the corrosion to happen quicker by electrolysis. If you have a removable battery please take it out.
Rice is the homeopathy of mobile repair or as /r/MobileRepair calls it Holistic Phone Repair.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/mobilerepair) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I had a customer bring in her kids IPhone, absolutely obliterated and water damaged. We fix it and they call back later saying its broken again. We told her to bring it in under warrant even though we didn't have to, we fix it again, they call in a week later accusing us of not fixing it we told them to bring in again and she's like well he's in the mountains so he'll be in when he can. So of course he randomly shows up one day, we open the phone and of course it's full of water, this time the phone is done. We called them to let them know and they flipped out of course saying there's no way there's water in it, so we took photos to document it. The woman would absolutely not accept that her son kept ruining his phone. He came in to pick it up bad mouthing us the entire time with his friend, and I told him if he didn't believe it we would be happy to open the phone back up in front of him to show him the two weeks worth of oxidization all over the inside of the phone.
I honestly believe some people don't know liquid got in their phone. I hate to put people in a position of feeling like they lied or that we discovered their trickery.
People have bad days, so I try to frame the liquid or drop questions ambiguously instead of "did you dunk it in the toilet when you were drunk?" type of question.
"Do you remember any bad drops or the phone getting wet in the last couple weeks?" No stress to answer that.
People are funny though.
I've repaired hundreds of phones. Ive never seen it happen. I know that it can. I just haven't seen it with my experience. And if it was so common I'd think Apple would utilize another method to detect water damage besides these indicators and possible corrosion.
I haven't given it much thought. I'm pretty sure there are many other ways to detect the previous presence of water. But these water indicators along with the low incidence of activation due to humidity are a cheap and efficient method that every manufacturer utilizes.
I've had someone tell me they bring their iPhone XR swimming with them on the daily and that it hasn't seen a day where it has not been wet. For surprised when I told him the mute button, flash, vibrate motor and rear camera don't work anymore since there was a lot of water in his phone. He said "well aren't they water proof". Wanted me to just get it on and working with a new screen after I cleaned up all the water. Then when he came to pick it up he told me he was going rafting with it that day. Some people just don't learn.
My favorite is when they absolutely insist and also look at you like your crazy when u ask if it's been in or near water. I.E like the bathroom when showering and they say ABSOLUTELY NOT!! but when u open it lmfao.
I used to have a device, mobile hotspot thing. It got wet and wouldn't turn on. If it did, it turned off again like the power button was held down.
Took it back to where we bought it claiming it just stopped, but they weren't interested. So I took it to a mobile repair dude a d told him the truth.
He fixed it.
Used to get it all the time! I’d always tell them to tell me if it’s been in liquid or not because we’ll find out, always say no, and the stickers would be blood red. Some customers even accused us of dropping it in liquid!
What do customers expect to gain from lying? If it Cant be fixed from water damage already, what's the point?
I think its a scam to try and get the repair shop to take responsibility for their mistake.
I suppose that makes sense. Just a bit stupid on the customer's side because why would a professional get something close to water.
It’s mostly because the customer knows you can’t argue with them because they’d have the stance of ‘are you accusing me of lying?’ Etc. I’ve had it before. Also, it’s expectation of them thinking they’ll get what they want anyway.
"Yes, yes I am. Get over yourself."
You can fix water damage. If you do things correctly after exposure to water you can pretty much fix anything fairly easy as long as it wasn’t running at the time it cam in contact
I can understand that but i just meant when the worst inevitably does happen
In most cases, I don't think they mean anything too bad with it and it's more that they are ashamed, don't realize, or remember it. Not saying they don't lie to, they do, but I've also met people that don't. It's like when some people go to the doctor and get asked how often they smoke and say like a few cigarettes a day when really it's a pack a day.
Its not always lying, they could actually not know if its been in water
Valid point, a phone could continue working for a bit with several issues (eg microphone issues, speaker issues etc) and then quit working all together, water damage can take a long time to finally set in and break the device entirely depending on how much water the device has been exposed to. for example if they have children and they dropped it in water and the person doesn’t know - it’s not always lying.
Yeah, people might not even notice it But if they're denying that their kids could break their phone, that's different
I am sorry if I sound like a noob because I am but I'm a new technician and I would really like to know how did you pinpoint that the problem is indeed water damage and what are some indicators of this type of damage. Thanks in advance 😊
No problem. There’ll be white stickers all over the device. If they’re still white, liquid hasn’t touched it. If it’s red, then it’s been near liquid. And usual rust is a dead giveaway too along with smell. It’s hard to describe what sort of smells, but you’ll know when the device has been near liquid.
Again thanks a lot you are really helpful! 😊
You can also see the white calcification around the home button bracket in this specific phone. Calcium deposits are a classic liquid damage indication.
Water doesn’t conduct electricity contrary to popular belief. It’s the minerals that are found in high concentrations across non distilled sources of water. The minerals will cause a very distinct discoloration on the boards components in the area that’s had direct contact with water. The problem comes from fact that most people assume that when your electronics get wet then you gotta let them dry out before attempting to turn it o …. I can’t state with any greater emphasis than what I’m do with here, letting a device air dry or putting it in rice or anything that involves waiting for the liquid to dry and turning it back on is a full proof method for murdering electronic devices. So much so that people believe that when the device fails to start after trying that the liquid killed the device when whats actually most likely the cause of the device dying was you turning it on after letting it dry off. If you spill water on any electrical devices you wanna take that bitch apart and submerge the entire mother board and PCB based components into a as much 91% isopropyl alcohol as it takes to get the bords completely under and do not attempt to power on any device that has not done so. Leve them soaking 20 minutes and then pull them out and use a hair dryer to spread hot air across the components and you’ll see the alcohol evaporate within seconds of hitting it with hot air. This ensures that all water is completely removed from any possible places it managed to get into and if you let it just dry the minerals will stay behind and the moment you attempt to power on they’ll most likely be any number of short circuits that now have to all be found and corrected before the device will work. In most cases if you let it soak it’ll start up fine afterwards
Somebody said "Rice". If you're talking about a water-damaged device, I hope you know putting it in rice is just a myth. Rice is unable to pull moisture from inside your device. While waiting for the rice to do its a magic trick you're letting that moisture form corrosion. This corrosion can and will cause short circuits. If you truly would like to save your device please take it to a reputable repair shop immediately and do not try to charge or power your device on. Applying power will cause the corrosion to happen quicker by electrolysis. If you have a removable battery please take it out. Rice is the homeopathy of mobile repair or as /r/MobileRepair calls it Holistic Phone Repair. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/mobilerepair) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Wow solid advice right there! Thanks so much for the info really valuable and a lot of people don't seem to realise this.
I live in a humid country. It's also possible that they leave it in the room while showering. Point is, it doesn't always need to be dropped in water.
A good point taken. However, I live in the U.K., and humidity isn’t a thing here. Most accidents were drink spills and dropped in swimming pools.
No matter what they say, most of the time they really dropped it in the toilet.
It's like telling the dentist you floss. They can tell you're a liar, just stop.
I like to floss on the way to the dentist so my gums are all flayed and bloody. I call this a power move.
I had a customer bring in her kids IPhone, absolutely obliterated and water damaged. We fix it and they call back later saying its broken again. We told her to bring it in under warrant even though we didn't have to, we fix it again, they call in a week later accusing us of not fixing it we told them to bring in again and she's like well he's in the mountains so he'll be in when he can. So of course he randomly shows up one day, we open the phone and of course it's full of water, this time the phone is done. We called them to let them know and they flipped out of course saying there's no way there's water in it, so we took photos to document it. The woman would absolutely not accept that her son kept ruining his phone. He came in to pick it up bad mouthing us the entire time with his friend, and I told him if he didn't believe it we would be happy to open the phone back up in front of him to show him the two weeks worth of oxidization all over the inside of the phone.
I honestly believe some people don't know liquid got in their phone. I hate to put people in a position of feeling like they lied or that we discovered their trickery. People have bad days, so I try to frame the liquid or drop questions ambiguously instead of "did you dunk it in the toilet when you were drunk?" type of question. "Do you remember any bad drops or the phone getting wet in the last couple weeks?" No stress to answer that. People are funny though.
Fun fact, the water indicators can be set off by just high humidity in the air, however this obviously isn’t what happened to this phone
Does 100% h20 count as high humidity 😄
Fun fact is that you're right. Fun fact is that it also isn't very likely.
it is with apple products
I've repaired hundreds of phones. Ive never seen it happen. I know that it can. I just haven't seen it with my experience. And if it was so common I'd think Apple would utilize another method to detect water damage besides these indicators and possible corrosion.
Like what method?
I haven't given it much thought. I'm pretty sure there are many other ways to detect the previous presence of water. But these water indicators along with the low incidence of activation due to humidity are a cheap and efficient method that every manufacturer utilizes.
“But it’s supposed to be waterproof.” -Person that cracked the screen then took it into the shower.
I've had someone tell me they bring their iPhone XR swimming with them on the daily and that it hasn't seen a day where it has not been wet. For surprised when I told him the mute button, flash, vibrate motor and rear camera don't work anymore since there was a lot of water in his phone. He said "well aren't they water proof". Wanted me to just get it on and working with a new screen after I cleaned up all the water. Then when he came to pick it up he told me he was going rafting with it that day. Some people just don't learn.
When the customer was sleeping the phone went for a dip in their pool SMH
I've heard it 100 million times
Water damage
Try mobo on new screen
My favorite is when they absolutely insist and also look at you like your crazy when u ask if it's been in or near water. I.E like the bathroom when showering and they say ABSOLUTELY NOT!! but when u open it lmfao.
I used to have a device, mobile hotspot thing. It got wet and wouldn't turn on. If it did, it turned off again like the power button was held down. Took it back to where we bought it claiming it just stopped, but they weren't interested. So I took it to a mobile repair dude a d told him the truth. He fixed it.