5 Ways to Retrieve Data from Water Damaged iPhone

You may suffer from the pain that you accidentally dropped your iPhone in water and lost some valued data. Though the iPhone released after iPhone 7 is water and dust resistant, there are still users who report data loss or hardware damage when their device have been in contact with water or liquid containing water. Worse of all, water or other liquid damage to iPhone isn’t covered by the Apple One-Year Limited Warranty. But don’t be so disappointed, it is still possible to rescue a wet iPhone and recover data from a water damaged iPhone. This article will show you want to do.

• Part 1. What to Do First When Dropped iPhone in Water
• Part 2. How to Recover Data from Water Damaged iPhone
• Part 3. Recover Data from Water Damaged iPhone That Won’t Turn on
• Part 4. Recover Data on Water Damaged iPhone from Cloud Services

Part 1. What to Do First When Dropped iPhone in Water

Steps to rescue a wet iPhone

1. Take iPhone out from water as soon as possible.
2. Turn it off immediately. DO NOT TRY TO USE IT, or you may short-circuit electronic components inside which can result in further damage and reduce the possibility of data recovery from the water damaged iPhone.
3. Gently drain the surface of your iPhone using a soft cloth.
4. Remove the case, headphones, SIM card and tray from your iPhone. If possible, ask some professional to dismantle the device.
5. Leave the device in a dry and warm place for some time. You can use some silica gel packets to help the iPhone fry faster.

Determine if an iPhone is water damaged

Water damage can make the iPhone malfunction. For example, the device won’t turn on, the speaker or microphone doesn’t work, the iPhone is overheating, the apps collapse, etc. These are common symptoms of iPhone water damage. But they can also be caused by other issues. To better ascertain if water or other liquid damaged your iPhone, you can check the built-in Liquid Contact Indicator (LCI).

An LCI is normally of white or silver color, but when it contacts water or a liquid, it will activate and turn red. The LCI won’t activate because of humidity and temperature changes, so it is reliable for determining liquid damage to your iPhone. You can see the location of the LCI in different iPhone models.

Part 2. How to Recover Data from Water Damaged iPhone

1. Retrieve Data from Water Damaged iPhone Directly

When your iPhone dries, try to restart it. If you find some data have been lost, you can restore your iPhone from an old backup to get back the missing data. But sometimes you may forget to back up your device or the backup is corrupted. In this case, you can make use of some third-party data recovery software to recover data from a water damaged iPhone.

Here Jihosoft iPhone Data Recovery is a good recommendation for you. It can scan and recover data from the iPhone, iPad, iPod touch without backup required. The recoverable data include photos, videos, contacts, messages, WhatsApp, notes, and many other App data. It supports the latest iOS/iPad OS and iPhone 11/11 Pro/ XS/XR. The program also enables data recovery from the iPhone backup.

• Step 1. Download, install and launch Jihosoft iPhone Data Recovery on your computer.
• Step 2. Connect your iPhone to the computer via a USB cable
• Step 3. Once your device is detected, click Start Scan to proceed.
• Step 4. When the scan is completed, all the scanned data will be well organized. You can click each category to preview related files.
• Step 5. Mark the data you want and click Recover to export them to your computer.
  

Part 3. Recover Data from Water Damaged iPhone That Won’t Turn on

If it’s that bad and your device can’t be turned on, then backup seems to be the only way to retrieve your data from the water damaged iPhone. The official way to recover data from a backup file is to restore the whole backup to your iOS device. But now your iPhone doesn’t work because of water damage. It doesn’t matter, you can use Jihosoft iPhone Data Recovery to extract data from your iPhone backup to the computer.

• Step 1. Open the iPhone data recovery software on your computer, then click View iTunes Backup or View iCloud Backup. If your device is connected to the computer, disconnect it.
• Step 2. Choose a backup from a list of iTunes backup files and click Start Scan. If you click View iCloud Backup, you need to sign in with your iCloud account first.
  
• Step 3. When it finishes scan, the scan results will be presented to you in categories. Click each file type to preview data in details.
• Step 4. When you find the data you want, mark them and click Recover to save these data onto your computer.

Of course, if you have an iPad or an spare iPhone, you can recover your data by restoring the backup of your iPhone to another device. You are allowed to restore a device from a backup of another kind of device. That is to say you can use an iPhone backup for an iPad. However, those iPhone contents that are not compatible with iPad won’t transferred to your iPad. As for those data which are automatically stored in iCloud, you can go to iCloud.com and get them back.

Part 4. Recover Data on Water Damaged iPhone from Cloud Services

When your data got lost due to water damage, you can also think back if you have backed up your important files to some cloud services like iCloud, Dropbox, Google Photos, etc. If yes, you are able to retrieve these data from these cloud services. For example, you can recover your photos on the water damaged iPhone from Google Photos.

• Visit https://photos.google.com/ on your computer.
• Sign in with your Google account.
• Browse and select the photos that you want to recover.
• Press Shift + D on the keyboard and download the photos to any place you like.