Phone coming back to life after being exposed to saltwater

[greypilgrim]

Hi.

I went swimming with my phone (turned on) in one of those waterproof pouches. After a while, I noticed a bit of water inside, went to the shore, took it out and dried it. It still seemed to be working, but not for long: it turned off. What happened next:

1. First it would not turn on at all.
2. Then it would only go to the (Huawei) splash screen.
3. About 15 min later, it would turn on and be fully functional.
4. The next morning, it would not see any of the two SIM cards anymore, but everything else worked.
5. The next day it was fully functional again, and has remained so for the last four days.

So what happened here? The water doesn't seem to have caused permanent damage (yet). Are functions turned off if the circuit detects that something is wrong?

I'll probably still have to expect the phone to break at some point due to corrosion...

 

[Rive]

In electronics, corrosion caused by water is a difficult beast. If the primary dose hit some working electronics, then it'll turn some metals into salts and oxides, and these are often hygroscopic => even if the first dose dried out (and so the electronics could be turned on) it'll draw in new water from the air and depending on luck and moisture level it'll produce some kind of 'am I in the mood to to work today?' spirit.

If the battery was not removed immediately (and, even worse: it was kept working) before drying out completely (and that may take days, in a very dry, and possibly: warm environment), then likely it won't last long.

 

[TonyStewart]

The internal protection (if any) failed yet survived without the usual drying-out-in-a-bag-of-rice trick. Amazing. I had this happen to an iPod that fell in a pool, then years later got it to work. The conductive salts with moisture can induce all sorts of fault conditions and yet be relatively high impedance if perfectly dry and not rusted (oxide)

Plan on backing up, get a pro cleanup or trading it in real soon.