Recently I have received an iPhone 4S which sustained water damage. The unfortunate customer managed to drop the phone in the swimming pool while recording a video. It sank to the bottom of the pool recording the whole way to the bottom. The phone didn’t stop working instantly. Customer dried it out and was using it for another 30 minutes after which the phone turned itself off. It was not possible to switch it back on. It wasn’t showing any sign of life and a recharging attempt was made which only caused the charger to heat up excessively.

The best course of action in this case would be disconnecting phone from its power source which is the battery and external charger, then drying it out. Unfortunately removing the battery in iPhones requires tools and a bit of practice. There are at least 3 special screws which are needed to be removed in order to remove the battery. The situation is also much more complicated when you have older iPhone model as the iPhone 3GS and older have to have the screen and mainboard, a.k.a. the Printed Circuit Board (PCB), removed along with 9 screws in order just to get to the battery. Whereas the majority of Android phones have a removable back panel which clips on to the phone and a removable battery underneath.

In the case of this iPhone recovery, water and moisture inside the phone was causing rapid battery drain due to multiple short circuits created by the presence of liquid. In situations like this, if the phone is not dried out as soon as possible it can causes additional and permanent damage to the mainboard of the phone. In this case, corrosion and damage to the PCB wasn’t severe which could have been due to a number of factors:

Be careful not to compromise any future computer forensics claim. It is easy to act with best intentions, but speak to us first!

A guide to handling electronic data and digital files....

The ease with which electronic documents can be created, copied, distributed and stored, and the frequency with which networked computers are backed up, means that the volume of potentially relevant documents can be staggering. It is easy to compromise electronic data if it is not handled in the correct way.

As soon as you suspect that relevant data may exist on a device, do whatever is within your power to assure that it remains untouched. It is human nature to want to “check out” possible evidence, but doing so risks compromising the evidence. If the computer is on and there is any reason to believe it might be “booby trapped” to destroy data - if it is not shut down in a certain way, simply unplug the machine from the electrical source.