iPhone Disaster Recovery

While we were in Camarillo, CA for Alana & Matt's wedding, we all spent a lot of time at the pool during the day and in between events. Bo and I even managed to get our traditional California wedding sunburns. However, we really didn't spend very much time in the pool.

That is, until Bo jumped in.

With his iPhone still in his pocket.

womp womp...

I had heard that you can save a phone from water damage by putting it in a bag of rice to soak up all the moisture. Right away, I checked with Bo's sister who said she had pretty good luck doing this, and followed her plan (thank you, Dudley!): we took his phone out of the case immediately and dried it as best we could. Then I got a huge bag of rice, and filled a small ziploc bag with it - enough to completely cover the phone. We left his phone in the rice bag for two full days, and changed out the rice every 12 hours or so. 

one of our many rice bags

By the time we were back home in Atlanta, his phone turned on for a few minutes while on the charger, and then died again. Bo had to leave town for work early the next morning (let me tell you, that was not a fun week), so I left the phone on the charger and attempted to turn it on every night that week when I got home from work. Every day it got a little better, and would stay turned on for a little longer, but it always died when I took it off the charger. Which sort of defeats the purpose of a mobile phone.

not very mobile

We tried coming up with all sorts of creative plans to get him a new phone for cheap. Retail prices are insane if you are not setting up a new contract or if you aren't yet eligible for an upgrade. Surprisingly, the cheapest and best route was avoiding AT&T altogether, and going straight to Apple. Bo went to the store when he got back in town that weekend, and told them what happened and what we had done to try to restore it. Turns out, if your phone works at all, you can turn it back into them and buy a brand new iPhone for just $150. Who knew?!? And since his old phone had been working on the charger, he had backed up everything on it to our home computer. When he got back home, he plugged in the new phone, and it was up and running in no time. Easy peasy.

So far, no one we've told about this adventure knew that this was an option, so in case you get drunk playing putt-putt golf and jump in the pool with your iphone your phone gets water damage, I figured I'd pass along this info. We saved some money (well, relatively...) and a lot of hassle compared to the other options.