Spills · Water Damage · Corrosion
Liquid damage gets worse while you wait.
A device can survive the original spill and fail days or weeks later, because conductive residue remains on the board and corrosion continues. The most important steps are to stop powering it, stop charging it, and get it opened and assessed as soon as practical.
Section 01 / First
What to do right now
Power it off
Do not turn it on to check whether it still works. Power moving through a wet board is what turns a cleanable spill into destroyed traces.
Do not charge it
Plugging it in puts current across a board that is still conductive in the wrong places. This does more damage than the original spill.
Rice does nothing
Rice draws a little ambient moisture and does not touch the residue already sitting on the board. The corrosion continues the entire time it is in the bag.
Get it opened quickly
Cleaning is the repair. Every day before that is more copper gone, and the difference between days and weeks is substantial.
Section 02 / Method
How liquid actually destroys a board
The water is not the problem for long. What it leaves behind is, and that is why a device that survived the spill can fail weeks later.
The residue is the damage
Anything other than pure water carries dissolved solids: sugars, salts, minerals. The water evaporates and leaves them on the board, where they remain conductive. The device now has connections its designers never put there, and current is finding them.
Corrosion runs on its own
With residue between two points at different voltages, an electrochemical reaction begins that consumes the copper. It continues as long as the residue is present, which is why a machine that worked fine for a fortnight after a spill suddenly does not.
Ultrasonic cleaning
The board is removed and cleaned properly, which means getting under the components where the residue actually sits. Wiping the visible surface accomplishes very little, because the damage is happening underneath chips and connectors where nothing can reach by hand.
Rebuilding what corrosion removed
Cleaning stops the process, it does not undo it. Traces that have been eaten through are bridged and rebuilt, and components that corroded internally are replaced. That is the second half of the job and the reason it is board-level work.
Section 03 / Symptoms
What liquid damage looks like
Including the case where the device still appears to work.
Section 04 / Devices
What I take liquid damage on
Section 05 / Questions
Before you book
It got wet but it still works. Do I actually need to do anything?
Yes. A device that survived the spill is not in the clear, it is on a clock. The residue left behind keeps consuming copper for weeks, and the failure when it comes is usually larger and more expensive than the cleaning would have been. This is the single most common way a recoverable spill becomes an unrecoverable one.
Does rice work?
No. Rice pulls a small amount of ambient moisture out of the air around the device and does nothing at all about the residue already sitting on the board, which is where the damage comes from. The corrosion continues the entire time the device is in the bag, and the delay is what costs you.
How long do I have?
There is no clean deadline, but the curve is steep. Days is a very different job from weeks, and weeks is a very different job from months. Sooner is materially cheaper and materially more likely to succeed.
It was only water. Is that better?
Somewhat, but not as much as people expect. Tap water carries dissolved minerals, and anything sweet or salty is considerably worse. Very little of what gets spilled on devices is pure enough to leave nothing behind.
Can liquid damage always be repaired?
No, and you will be told honestly when it cannot. Extensive corrosion across multiple stages can pass the point where repair makes sense. That assessment comes with the diagnostic, before money is committed.
Book
Power it off and bring it to the Massapequa shop.
Do not charge the device on the way in. $40 diagnostic credited toward approved repair, and the sooner it is opened, the more survives.