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Water damage questions

E

Eric8199

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 27, 2009
804
236
So I have a couple questions about water damage. Long story short, iPhone 4S slipped out of my hand and into a sink where water was running. Didn't get real wet, and everything seems to work fine, but it appears as if the water sensor in the dock has been triggered.

Typically if you swap a phone under warranty with Apple, your new phone will continue on the same warranty as your old one — so if you still had six months left, the new phone would be covered for those six months.

But when you water damage your phone, the warranty is gone. So if I get an OWR from Apple, will the new, undamaged phone still have warranty, or only for the normal 90 days for a refurb?

Also, what types of issues should I be looking for to determine if my phone is actually damaged? Apps work great, touchscreen is still good. Speaker and mic still work. Everything seems absolutely fine. Like I said, it didn't get real wet, and I don't think any water got inside, but there was definitely water in the dock and headphone jack.

Thanks in advance. Anyone having any luck getting phones replaced for free now that there is AppleCare + (which I didn't get)? If I go in for a replacement, I wouldn't lie, and would be willing to pay the $200 if necessary (just not happily). I plan to keep the phone and not get it replaced if it continues to work fine.
 
Eric8199 said:
Also, what types of issues should I be looking for to determine if my phone is actually damaged?
Click to expand...

It sounds like you have avoided any major damage. When I dropped my phone in water I didn't notice any problems for quite a while, until i noticed one minor issue. My screen is almost completely black at low brightness. Because of that I can't use auto brightness since that will make the screen impossible to see in certain light conditions.
For your other question, I think the warranty will still be one year from when you originally purchased the device, or 90 days after getting the replacement, whichever is longer. I am not 100% sure on that though.
 
simple switch at the apple store

When my iPhone was like 10 days old I was putting my work bag in the car when my wife texted me she sent a video of my son doing something cute he was a few months old at the time. I opened the door to my car my bag slipped off my shoulder hit my hand and my iPhone 4s and fell DIRECTLY into what amounted to a small stream of water. the whole top half ws submerged, but beyond all odds it still worked perfectly. Fast forward like 3 months and I would intermittently lse 3G coverage. I tried restoring and a few other things but it would still happen. So I took a look at the water sensors and NEITHER was triggered top or bottom. So I went to the apple store spoke with the genius and being a computer guy I was able to do a lot of the trouble shooting myself and I explained this to him and he took it to the back for a couple f seconds came back and said since I had already troubleshot it he would just switch it out. this is the 2nd time I had an indecent like this, with my iPhone 4 both the top and bottom were triggered, but the part that was really submerged the camera apparently does not have a water sensor and again they swapped it out with no hassle. :apple::):D:cool:;)
 
Eric8199 said:
So I have a couple questions about water damage. Long story short, iPhone 4S slipped out of my hand and into a sink where water was running. Didn't get real wet, and everything seems to work fine, but it appears as if the water sensor in the dock has been triggered.

Typically if you swap a phone under warranty with Apple, your new phone will continue on the same warranty as your old one — so if you still had six months left, the new phone would be covered for those six months.

But when you water damage your phone, the warranty is gone. So if I get an OWR from Apple, will the new, undamaged phone still have warranty, or only for the normal 90 days for a refurb?

Also, what types of issues should I be looking for to determine if my phone is actually damaged? Apps work great, touchscreen is still good. Speaker and mic still work. Everything seems absolutely fine. Like I said, it didn't get real wet, and I don't think any water got inside, but there was definitely water in the dock and headphone jack.

Thanks in advance. Anyone having any luck getting phones replaced for free now that there is AppleCare + (which I didn't get)? If I go in for a replacement, I wouldn't lie, and would be willing to pay the $200 if necessary (just not happily). I plan to keep the phone and not get it replaced if it continues to work fine.
Click to expand...

As no harm was done, why trade it? There is always a chance that there will be something wrong with your new phone!
 
stealth, I was asking in case problems arise. I have no plans on swapping it.

Upon closer inspection, it appears it may have been lint over the sensor in my dock connector. I got a nice flashlight today and brushed the lint away and it still looks white to me. If it's changed, it's pink, but definitely not red.

Anyone have a picture of what the sensor looks like both triggered and not triggered on a white iPhone 4/4S? I compared it to my wife's but hers is black and much easier to see.

Anyway, it appears disaster was averted for me. Thankfully. Will be MUCH more careful around the sink from here forward. Worst thing is I was moving it to keep it from being splashed. Should have left it alone. haha.
 
I would throw it in rice overnight just to make sure.

Water could cause plenty of issues down the road even though everything might work and seem fine and dandy now.
 
Where are these water sensor triggers that you guys say you are checking? I've never seen that on my 4. Thanks!
 
There is one in the bottom of the headphone jack and another in the dock port. They're little white circles (though the dock connector one looks more like a rectangle due to its opening). They are very visible on the white models (unless you have a lot of dirt/lint in there), but the white models are a little harder to see because the inside of the ports are also white.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Just stopped into the Apple Store and had them check to see if any of the sensors had triggered. They hadn't. So just a heads up to those who have sensors trigger and say that they never got their phone wet, I literally dropped mine in a sink of running water and it didn't trigger a sensor.
 
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