Salt Water Damage on a Mobile Phone

We’ve just had an HTC M8 smartphone arrive at our Manchester lab for data recovery. The phone had been submersed in salt water and on inspection has a fair amount of electronic / salt water damage.

We took the photos below which show the damage to the phone’s internal board and components. You can learn more about our recovery services from HTC M8’s and all other types of mobile and smartphone by visiting our main phone and tablet data recovery page.

Recovering the Data

Phones that have been dropped in water and other liquids will accumulate dirt and grit that needs to be removed from their electronic circuitry before any form of data recovery attempt can be made. Removal of grit and grime is best achieved using ultrasonic cleaning techniques (see our page here: https://www.dataclinic.co.uk/ultrasonic-cleaning-for-phone-hard-drive-data-recovery/). In this case though, recovering the data from the phone is probably best achieved using either JTAG or Chip-Off procedures rather than working to get the phone functioning again as a unit. This is because many of the phone’s circuits are too far damaged to be repaired. Therefore by removing the memory chips &/or reading the information directly from them, before piecing the downloaded back together through software is the preferred  way to go. We have a specific data recovery service that recovers data from liquid and water damaged phones.

Pictures of a Salt Water Damaged Phone

This picture show damage to the circuits that control the phone’s screen and touch sensitivity controls.

Battery socket on the mainboard. This is where the battery attaches to the phone’s mainboard – notice the severe electrical damage caused by the shorting.

Electrical damage to the phone’s battery connector.