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So a friend of mine recently dropped her phone in a pool. Somehow water got in and she immediately turned her phone off and brought it to me. I took the phone apart and cleaned and dried everything and the phone works fine for the most part. Literally almost nothing looks wrong with the phone in terms of water damage. However, there are a few things that don’t work. The earpiece speaker, proximity sensor, loudspeaker, and mics at the bottom of the phone all don’t work. Front facing camera and charging port both work fine though. Along with this, the iPhone takes a long time to boot up (at least like 5 minutes). Wondering if replacing those parts would solve the issue or if it’s something bigger than that. What would be the reason for these parts not working while the parts next to them work fine. APPRECIATE ANY HELP, THANK YOU!
This one is tough because you have two strong possiblities that are unrelated to each other. Water damage vs common audio ic fault. We know that iPhone 7/7+ have a board level epidemic where flexion during normal use will tug or pull at the C12 pad under the audio ic causing a poor connection. This manifests in the following ways: iPhone 7/7+ audio ic fault presentation: 1.) Greyed out voice memos 2.) Caller can’t hear you on calls 3.) Siri can’t hear you 4.) Various other audio/speaker/microphone-related problems 5.) Long boot time (3-5 minutes) 6.) Long boot loop (3-5 minutes) and fails update/restore with error 4013 7.) Never progresses during boot past Apple logo but is detected as normal by iTunes All of these symptoms are proven to be associated with the audio ic c12 problem. A lot of these symptoms are on your list of problems, however audio ic flexion fault is completely unrelated to water damage, and it is unusual for water to penetrate the audio ic area in the iPhone 7. For water damage only, what is common is “parts problems” bad microphones, cameras, etc, as well as problems where water goes in the iPhone 7, which is: iPhone 7 water damage hot spots: Most common–that water never hits the board at all. After that: Very top of phone, power/vol flex connector And: Very bottom of phone, backlight/image area. So what to do? You need to do what I call “Rule #1” which is put the logic board in a known good housing and see if these problems are parts problems or not. Rule #1 is “You don’t have a board problem until you KNOW you don’t have a parts problem” Cross that off your list and then the next step is crisp visual exam under a microscope to see if this is likely water damage or audio ic fault. Good luck! Jessa of iPad Rehab
Sounds like water got under the audio chip on the logic board. To get that fixed you’ll need to take the phone to a reputable shop that does micro-soldering / board level repairs for iPhones. There are also other parts that are probably corroded / burnt like the front camera assembly for example. If there is any discoloration on the front camera ribbon cable plug end like dark gold instead of the normal bright gold you see on the pins, the front camera probably needs to be replaced.
Hi having the exact same problem and I don’t know anything about taking apart or assembling phones so any suggestions? Thank you
