Corrosion: the fault that arrives three weeks after the accident
The short answer
Water leaves salts and minerals behind when it evaporates. Those deposits conduct, and combined with the small voltages permanently present on a live board they corrode metal continuously. The phone works, then a fortnight later a speaker dies, then it restarts, then it does not start.
The water is not the problem. What it leaves behind is
Pure water is a poor conductor. Tap water, sea water, coffee, beer and cola are not, because they carry dissolved salts, minerals, sugars and acids. When the water evaporates those stay behind as a residue across the board.
That residue is hygroscopic: it pulls moisture out of ordinary air, so it never truly dries. And it conducts, which means it creates paths for current between things that were never meant to be connected.
A phone board has voltage on it whenever the battery is attached, even switched off. So the moment there is a conductive path, electrochemical corrosion starts, and it runs continuously for as long as the residue and the voltage are both present.
Why it takes weeks to show
Corrosion eats metal slowly. A trace or a solder joint has to lose enough material before the connection actually fails, and how long that takes depends on what the liquid was, how much of it there is, and how warm the phone gets.
So the pattern is predictable rather than mysterious. The phone works for days. Then something small stops: an earpiece, a microphone, one camera. Then it restarts at random. Then it will not boot.
People rarely connect that to the pint three weeks earlier, which is why the single most useful thing you can tell us about a phone that will not start is whether anything was ever spilled on it.
- Days one to seven: often nothing at all
- One to three weeks: a speaker, a microphone or a camera goes
- Two to six weeks: random restarts, or charging becoming intermittent
- One to three months: it stops booting, and the repair is now board level
Under the shields is where it lives
The parts of a phone board that matter most sit under soldered metal shields. Liquid gets under them easily and evaporates slowly, so the visible surface of a board can look perfectly clean while the corrosion is doing its work out of sight.
That is why a proper liquid treatment means removing those shields and cleaning what is underneath, and why a phone that has simply been dried out and reassembled is not a phone that has been treated.
It is also why nobody can quote a liquid damage repair from a counter. What is under the shields decides everything, and it cannot be seen from outside.
Why no honest shop warranties liquid damage
Because corrosion continues after the repair in ways nobody can predict. We can clean a board thoroughly and get a phone working perfectly, and residue we could not reach can still fail a joint three months later.
That is not a technician being careless; it is the nature of the fault. A warranty on it would be a promise we could not keep, and we would rather say so at the counter than write it on a docket and argue about it later.
What we do warrant is any part we fit and the work we do. If we replace a screen on a liquid damaged phone, the screen and the fitting are covered for 360 days like anything else. It is the corrosion itself that is not.
What actually reduces the damage
Speed, and nothing else comes close. A phone opened and cleaned the same day usually survives. One cleaned a month later often does not, and by then the repair is board-level work rather than a clean.
After that, temperature. A phone left somewhere warm corrodes faster, which is the other reason the airing cupboard and the hair dryer are bad advice.
And keeping the battery disconnected, which is what powering it off approximates and what actually opening it achieves properly.
Common questions.
Almost certainly. Delayed corrosion is the most common pattern in liquid damage, and random restarts a few weeks afterwards is exactly what it looks like. Tell us about the spill; it changes where we look.
Because corrosion continues after the repair in ways nobody can predict, so a warranty on it would be a promise no shop could keep. Any part we fit and the work we do is still covered for 360 days.
The corrosion already done cannot be undone; metal that has gone is gone. What a proper clean does is stop it progressing, and repair or replace the joints and components it has damaged.
Not on its own. The parts that matter sit under soldered metal shields, and liquid gets under them and evaporates slowly. A board can look clean and be corroding underneath.
Not necessarily. Phones are recovered weeks after a soaking. The odds fall with time and it is still worth the free assessment to find out where yours stands.
Where this leads.
Something actually broken? Bring it in.
Free diagnostic, a firm price before any work, and a 360-day warranty on every completed repair.
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