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How to check an iPhone for water damage — beyond the red sticker
The sticker is a hint, not a verdict
Every iPhone carries liquid contact indicators — small white pads that turn red on contact with water, one visible in the SIM tray slot. Two problems: the SIM-slot indicator misses vapour exposure that entered elsewhere, and trays get swapped. A white sticker does not clear the phone, and a red one does not condemn the board. It starts the investigation, not ends it.
The corrosion timeline
Water rarely kills a phone the day it gets wet. The sequence that matters to a buyer or a shop:
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| Hour 0 | Shorts, if any, happen now — usually on whatever rail was powered. |
| Week 1 | Phone often works normally. Flux residue and minerals begin eating connector pins and test pads. |
| Month 1–6 | Intermittent faults: a camera that vanishes, Wi-Fi that greys out, charging that needs a wiggle. Each is a corroded line letting go. |
| Later | The phone that "suddenly died for no reason" — the reason was six months old. |
What moisture looks like electrically
A phone does not need opening to show the aftermath. Over USB, the record shows:
- Subsystems that disappear. A camera or Wi-Fi module that stops enumerating, then returns after warmth, is a corroded connector talking.
- Panic logs naming different subsystems over weeks. Chip failures are consistent; corrosion wanders. A log that blames Wi-Fi on Monday and the rear camera in March is describing spreading damage, not two coincidences.
- Charging path faults — the port is the most common entry point, and the first casualty is usually one of its data lines, not power.
For used-phone buyers: a phone can pass every visual check and still carry a wandering-fault history in its logs. Read the logs before the money moves; the seller's "it works fine" and the phone's own records do not always agree.
If the phone got wet today
Power off, do not charge, do not use rice — rice does nothing but add starch to the corrosion. The only intervention that changes the outcome is an ultrasonic clean of the board before corrosion sets, which is a same-week errand, not a someday one.
Read it from the phone instead of guessing
PhoneVitals pulls every number in this article off the device itself over USB — the gauge records, the panic logs, the pairing checks — and prints them in a report your customer can verify by QR code. The first scan on your computer is free.
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