OT: iPhone SE died out of the blue

[giverdada]

I was driving and tried to voice command call my brother. Sir asked, "Which Steve?". In the middle of my reply, the phone switched off, screen blank. It has been black and powered off and otherwise 'dead' ever since.

About 5 days before this, I had gone for a run to meet some buddies. The rain increased from drizzle to steady downpour. I had the phone in an old, cracked Lifeproof case, then I wrapped it in some plastic I found in the park. 2.5h of rainy running later and the phone and case looked no worse for the wear. I even made some calls home in the last couple of miles when the rain let up. Phone worked all week. Died on Friday.

I'm bummed about having to use an older phone that doesn't do too much or with too much speed, but I'm somewhat devastated by my own lack of backups. It looks like the last time I backed the phone up was this time last year. So that's a year of 'My Life in Photos' gone. Most of my phone photos are crap, but they're to remind me of moments. I photographed my girls' CX season on my 'real' camera, thank goodness. But all those sunrises and cups of perfectly pressed espresso and cheesy grins with my lady are gone.

So, all y'all folks out there who know way more than I do about technology: what can I do now? I took it to a Mac certified place and they said to take it somewhere else. I took it to a third party place and they tried the port and the battery and nothing changed. Data extraction? Is it possible? Will it cost me an arm and a leg? 2016 iPhone SE 32Gig. Nothing backed up. I'm an idiot.:help:

[weisan]

Have you tried my favorite " zipbloc + rice " method yet?

[fa63]

Can't really offer any useful advice, but your post reminded to back up the photos on my iPhone, which I think is on its last legs (I am still using an iPhone 5S...) :)

[giverdada]

Haven't tried rice. It's precious commodity in this house though... :)

I have looked up the success rate of rice and everyone seems to think it's a solution but no one seems to have much success with it. Rice. My favourite food.

[Plum Hill]

I own Apple stock.
Buy a new one.
Not good advice but hopefully got a smile out of you.

My cheapie TracFone LG has been doing the same thing but always seems to reboot when it feels like it. Too tight to buy an iPhone.

[josephr]

as the result of an 'accident,' my moto x bit the dust so I needed a new phone quick. wow, was I shocked at the prices of new motorola phones on amazon ---- I'm not sure what's going on, but I got a new moto G6 turbo for $225 and this thing is lightening fast, nougat 8.0, 32gb memory (expandable), and battery life for days. I've always been an android guy, but now my wallet is android guy too. :cool:

[weiwentg]

Haven't tried rice. It's precious commodity in this house though... :)

I have looked up the success rate of rice and everyone seems to think it's a solution but no one seems to have much success with it. Rice. My favourite food.

It is supposed to work by absorbing fluid. The problem is, you need to shut your device off right when the water accident occurs and put it in rice immediately, before anything starts to short circuit in the electronics. If liquid damage is what killed your iPhone, chances are it's too late to dry it out - although there's no harm in trying.

Personally, I back my iPhone up automatically to iCloud. You can set things such that it only backs up when connected to wifi. Unfortunately, best advice I can give is to do this from now on.

If the phone won't turn on, then I bet it's going to be quite expensive indeed, but I've never tried anything like this. If the flash chips were damaged by the liquid, then it may not be possible to recover anything. If they are intact, then I suppose it could be technically possible to extract them from the logic board and read them, but it won't be cheap.

And that is why iCloud exists, and it's why you should back up to iCloud. Alternatively, if you are concerned over privacy (a valid concern, although I will say that Apple seems to be better than Google about securing and not accessing your data), then I think you can set your device to back up to just your desktop computer over wifi, without backing up to iCloud.

[Birddog]

We did the rice trick when my wife took her phone for a dive. My son handled the chore removing the cards and then putting the phone in a bag of rice for at least 12 hours. The whole family stood over the operation as my son brought her phone back to life. The Lazarus phone worked well for another couple of years. We did act immediately after the swim on the procedure.

[avalonracing]

I was using my new water-resistant (proof to a few feet they say) iPhone to film the Ellicott City MD flood that happened a couple of months ago. The phone could not have been any wetter if it were submerged for an hour. While I thought I had ruined it as the sound was screwed up for a few hours afterward it still works perfectly. I highly recommend an iPhone 8 this time round.

[Ralph]

I'm kind of backward on some new tech stuff, but my iPhone SE has a function in settings that backs up my stuff on ICloud...free. So if this phone dies, and I get a new iPhone, I just put in my Apple ID in new phone and it automatically down loads to my new phone. So I have same stuff on new phone that I had on old phone. Isn't that how it works? And my SE was $160 new (not refurbed) at Consumer Cellular. I don't do expensive phones or phone buy plans either. Maybe you saved your stuff on ICloud.

[giverdada]

Yup. That's how it works IF you use iCloud. Of course, I did not use iCloud, and have found myself in an unfortunate 'gap-like' circumstance where my phone stuff was too big for my computer (not enough space on my computer to back the phone up there) and I had a mental problem with paying for extra Cloud space though it seems that this is the way the world is headed. So my computer was too old for my phone. My phone was too new for my computer, and held too much storage for my supposed budget for an iCloud subscription. Then the phone died and the loss of everything on it now indicates just how precious a couple bucks a month could have been if I had been more prescient in my backup habits. Alas, hindsight...

[semdoug]

Have you tried holding down the on/off and home buttons simultaneously for 30 seconds or longer? I’m not familiar with SE but this worked when my 6 plus died out of the blue.

[unterhausen]

it's possible you just had a thermal failure of the processor connections. Which means you should put it in the freezer if the rice trick doesn't work. Putting it in the freezer often gives you enough runtime to back things up. Then get rid of it.

[HenryA]

it's possible you just had a thermal failure of the processor connections. Which means you should put it in the freezer if the rice trick doesn't work. Putting it in the freezer often gives you enough runtime to back things up. Then get rid of it.

Try this first, then the rice trick. If no good you are sunk unless you pony up big money and maybe a forensics outfit can recover some contents maybe. Not worth the money, I suspect. If even possible.

The problem with the auto constant back up to the cloud is that it assumes you are always connected to a fast network. If you mostly live on a slow network like I do you will learn to turn that off to preserve any semblance of performance. A past “update” to iOS turned this back on by default. What a headache that caused here until I figured out why our network was soooo slow. If you live on a big fast connection ignore what I wrote. But keep in mind that if you put enough devices on almost any network you can clog it. Imagine 100 iPhones backing up thousands of pictures simultaneously. And the files just keep getting bigger.

There are apps that let you connect your phone to a computer or another iOS device while bypassing the Apple environment trap. If you have the discipline to use them regularly you can just do simple device to device transfers and stay out of this trouble.

Good luck!

[pdmtong]

Have you tried holding down the on/off and home buttons simultaneously for 30 seconds or longer? I’m not familiar with SE but this worked when my 6 plus died out of the blue.


Definitely try this ^. My guess is it’s too late for the other wet phone remedies.

iCloud storage is 99 cents a month for 50gb which should be more than enough for a 6.
Agreed the next tier gets expensive but if yuh now get a 128/256gb phone presumably more video and larger photo files

If you are unwilling or unable to get a new computer an alternative may be to point the backup to an external drive. Those are in the 2TB for $70 range.

Unless using an automated backup everyone can be found guilty of not paying enough attention to this now part of life

[jtakeda]

If you’re going to do the “rice trick” I would just use silica desiccant and not waste your time.

The “rice trick” doesn’t really absorb much water it’s more about you not touching the phone for 24 hours.

Silica desiccant will absorb more moisture

[giverdada]

after more reading, it seems i missed the window for the rice/desicant trick as the phone died days after it may have gotten wet. it also seems that my use of third-party charger cables may be the culprit - incorrect voltage frying some pins in there? ugh. stuff i can't fix that's for sure.

[JACKS]

just to confirm, are you certain you do not have the back up feature turned on to icloud ever? the phone never notify you to perform back ups?
at this point, i would recommend to try to blow dry the phone some more and then re-charge the battery. you should also attempt to turn on the phone by holding the power and home button simultaneously while plugged in to see if it turns on or off.
but since you have taken the phone to apple and third party shops, those methods must have been tried. but if not yet tried, it's worth a try and see if miracle occurs.
good luck.
fellow Torontonian.

[weiwentg]

after more reading, it seems i missed the window for the rice/desicant trick as the phone died days after it may have gotten wet. it also seems that my use of third-party charger cables may be the culprit - incorrect voltage frying some pins in there? ugh. stuff i can't fix that's for sure.

Yeah, the rice thing will only work if there is currently moisture in the phone. The reason you need to turn off stuff the second it gets wet is that if the water causes a short circuit on the logic board, it could damage the delicate electronics. If there's already a short circuit but all the moisture has evaporated, then the rice thing won't do anything. Damage already done. BUT, there is also no harm in trying it!

We don't necessarily know that moisture is what killed the phone, btw. Combined with those Lifeproof cases, they're quite water resistant. The issue would be if water got into the ports. I've had those cases, and they do cover the ports well. It could be the cheap third party charger cable issue. Note, this is only an issue with the knock off cables. Anything that has an MFi certification (made for iCrap) should be OK. I don't know what the situation with Amazon in Canada is, but the Amazon Basics Lightning cables have worked well on all my iCrap.

I don't mean to belabor the point, but putting some effort and money down to get a backup solution in place for both your phone and computer is very worth it, IMO. USB hard drives are very cheap. You probably can offload some of the files on your computer to the hard drive to free up disk space, so you can then store a phone backup. Then you should probably set an automatic backup for the computer itself. Say what you will about Apple, Mac OS makes this pretty easy. In your case, you just have to remember to plug that USB drive in regularly.

You can get one of their Time Capsules if you want to make it totally seamless, or you can get a generic network attached storage if you don't want to pay the unnecessary premium for a specialized device. Both those solutions are a bit pricey and they take some up-front cognitive effort, but they last a long time.

[deechee]

dumb question. did you try connecting the phone to the computer directly? Nothing? Can you borrow an apple cable/amazon basics cable from a friend/coworker?

The rice/silica trick is fine, but nothing beats opening up the phone I find. If you've given up at this point, I would try to open it (https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone+SE+Teardown/60902) or go to some kiosk in a mall / or some random person on kijiji. Some of them are pretty quick and cheap. So many people have iphones; the guys who do it all day are pretty good.

Good luck. We've all been there. Sucks.