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Help Is there any way to retrieve data from a water damaged phone?

thegovna

Lurker
Oct 2, 2015
4
0
I stupidly got in the ocean for roughly 30 seconds with my Samsung Galaxy S4 mini in my pocket, remembered it was there, ran out to dry it off, took the battery out and left it to dry. This was a week and 2 days ago, I let it dry out and I can get only 2 responses out of it. It will sometimes buzz and show a grayed out battery icon with a circle in it then go dead, or sometimes it will show the "Samsung Galaxy S4 mini" logo, then go dead. I have tried several different batteries including non water damaged ones but I can't get any more of a response than that. Plugging it in to the wall or a computer doesn't seem to do anything to help or hurt.

So since that's the status of my phone I was wondering if there was any way to retrieve any data off it now. I never rooted it or did any type of modifications to it, but I have opened it up to look at the damage and to see if there was something inside I could fix. All I want are my pictures and my contacts, and was hoping there's a way to save them.

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Sea water is corrosive and contaminated. It would have been better to soak in a rubbing alcohol solution to rinse it, dry the excess with a paper towel and then place in rice. There's a detailed explanation on here somewhere. You could still try this but if you've switched it on the contaminants my have caused a short in the hardware meaning it's dead. There are data retrieval options but are likely to be very expensive. On the other hand, if your device was synced with Google, you may be able to recover your data.
 
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damn. I already got a new galaxy s5 so im good in terms of a phone, I'm just bummed that nearly 2 years of photos and any new contacts are lost. I didn't do any type of back up either (cause i'm an idiot apparently)

I'll try and dunk it in alcohol to clean the salt corrosion but wont hold my breath. At least I have a good story for where it died, at one of only 4 green sand beaches in the world on the big island of hawaii
 
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Sea water is corrosive and contaminated. It would have been better to soak in a rubbing alcohol solution to rinse it, dry the excess with a paper towel and then place in rice. There's a detailed explanation on here somewhere. You could still try this but if you've switched it on the contaminants my have caused a short in the hardware meaning it's dead. There are data retrieval options but are likely to be very expensive. On the other hand, if your device was synced with Google, you may be able to recover your data.

It can involve removing the flash memory chips from the dead logic-board and reading them directly with an appropriate rig, and it might be extremely expensive indeed. It's something the feds might use, to recover evidence data from smashed and destroyed phones, etc.

If want to try that, I believe Drive Savers are one of the best in the business.
http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/
 
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Things like this makes me wonder why Samsung didn't make the S6 waterproof, and why only Sony followed suit with the waterproofing premium phones/flagships
To be fair, their water resistant phone is the Galaxy S6 Active. Same specs as the S6, but it only comes with 32 gb of internal memory, no 64/128gb options. They did it that way starting with the S4 Active due to ignorant buyers not knowing the difference between water resistant and water proof and then getting into a hissy fit when they got denied warranty due to water damage after taking a swim or bath with it.
 
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damn. I already got a new galaxy s5 so im good in terms of a phone, I'm just bummed that nearly 2 years of photos and any new contacts are lost. I didn't do any type of back up either (cause i'm an idiot apparently)

I'll try and dunk it in alcohol to clean the salt corrosion but wont hold my breath. At least I have a good story for where it died, at one of only 4 green sand beaches in the world on the big island of hawaii

Know the feeling well my friend. With your S5, may I recommend using Dropbox as you get that free for 2 years now to back up 50GB's worth of stuff! Hope this helps you in future if anything happens!

P.S. Hawaii? Sigh... I envy your dead phone... [emoji20]
 
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