Help! Potential data loss from water damage

[mundavian]

Would reward hundreds of dollars to fix this problem: On a trip to Cost Rica I swam in a salt water bay for about 10 minutes with the S20+ in my pocket. It's IP68 so no problem, right? Wrong.

- Got out of the water, looked at the phone, it was in reboot mode (standard Samsung Galaxy S20+ 5G boot screen ) but then booted normally. I thought - strange but looks ok.

- Minutes later it went into a reboot loop, the usual initial standard boot screen, then the short "Samsung" only screen, then black, then repeats.

- I rinsed the phone in fresh water and blew it out, thinking the salt may have gotten on charge port contacts. No luck, the reboot loop continued many times until it finally rebooted in to Safe Mode on its own.

- I tried restarting hoping to get out of safe mode, but it went back into boot loop and eventually back into Safe Mode.

- I used the phone successfully for several hours in Safe Mode (normal function but without 3rd party apps) until it crashed to the Custom OS blue screen. The volume buttons that would allow install of custom os or restart do nothing.

- Have never gotten away from the blue screen since then. The power button, if held down for ~15 seconds will cause the phone to go black and then immediately back to the blue screen.

- Brought the phone into a fixit store, they pulled the phone apart looking for water damage, found none, said they tested the battery charging and it works normally (so no damage to charge port), tested the volume switches and they worked, so ruling out switch damage from the water.

- Asked another hacker and he said the only thing he could try to do is reflash the device with Odin but all of my data would be wiped.

So I'm in perpetual blue-screen mode. I don't see how the rom would be corrupted from the water even if there was a short across a component and Samsung must have considered this in its IP68 design, right?

Unfortunately, I had two apps on the phone with important data that was not backed up so I'm preying that someone has a theory for what's going on. I would go to great effort/expense to recover the data even if the device is a loss.
Thanks!!

 

[blackhawk]

It's toast.
You should have powered it down and pulled the battery immediately. Flush with lots of RO water then flush with anhydrous isopropyl alcohol, remove as much alcohol as possible then allow to dry in a war/hot dry room with a fan on it for a few days.
Even then it likely will not survive. You could try that now by the odds aren't good. Maybe it run long enough to get the data.

A data recovery service could remove the SOC and probably recover it for around $800.

 

[mundavian]

Thanks for the reply! I don't care about the phone, just the data. Do you know of a service that could pull the data?

This is the second Samsung IP68 that died with minor exposure to water. The rating is worthless. But interesting that the fixit shop found no internal water or corrosion. Can't understand the failure mechanism.

 

[blackhawk]

Thanks for the reply! I don't care about the phone, just the data. Do you know of a service that could pull the data?

This is the second Samsung IP68 that died with minor exposure to water. The rating is worthless. But interesting that the fixit shop found no internal water or corrosion. Can't understand the failure mechanism.

There was a thread that had that info but finding it is almost impossible. The chip needs to be hot aired off and put in a test socket. They're recovery services that do this.

Regardless of the ip rating always assume it's not waterproof. Only one thin seal needs to fail.
Use a zip lock freezer bag or two if on water.
Around salt or brine water exposure must zero.
IP 68 is nice more for the dust protection...