After some slight water exposure my phone won't power on - Samsung Note II, is there anyway to retrieve the data?

[AC Question]

Slight water exposure - now phone won't power on - Samsung Note II - pics

So my friend's Galaxy Note II got slightly wet during a ride at an amusement park. Immediately after the ride the screen had some water in it that would move around when pressed. The screen showed the launcher but was it white-washed and flashing. Soon after that the phone powered off and now it will not turn on. When the power button is pressed and held, a couple seconds go by and the screen very briefly lightens in color before going back to being powered off. The phone doesn't appear at all when plugged into a computer, even during the brief powerup. No activity shows up through the USB connection; the computer doesn't even see that a device has been plugged in.

The battery was left in the phone and the phone was attempted to be powered on multiple times while it was still wet. It was placed in a bag of rice but that was 12 hours after it first got wet.

Pictures of the motherboard (copy + paste + fix because I can't post links):
imgur . com/a/iLtmI

I highlighted in yellow the only area I can see that has visible damage. It looks corroded, with white "powder" around it. Other than that area both the front and back of the motherboard look normal. I checked the battery's output with a multimeter and it gives a strong reading. I also tested booting with a USB charger plugged in but there was no difference.

My friend's primary concern is retrieving the data on the internal memory (no SD card was used). Being able to use the phone normally is secondary to getting the data back.

Any suggestions on where to proceed from here are greatly appreciated.

 

[VidJunky]

Re: Slight water exposure - now phone won't power on - Samsung Note II - pics

Wow. Yeah none of the right steps were taken that day, trying to power on a device full of water?? First let me state the obvious there can be no retrieval with out the unit powering up. Meanwhile, now that it is dry, it is dry correct? Is there any indication that it is powering on? If you think it's powering on and the screen isn't displaying this should still work. The digitizer and the LED or AMOLD display are separate from one another and it's the digitizer that accepts the touch input. Now when I lost my screen I was lucky that I had a few things in place to make this work. First you will have to be fairly confident that you can navigate the screens with out being able to see them. This includes any screen locks or password inputs along the way. The USB debugging will have to be enabled. That's where I got lucky because I always kept it enabled. Finding it without being able to see even if you know where it is will be challenging. From there you can follow the YouTube video and display the screen on you PC or laptop. Everything is cake from there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8foXW5gqbs

 

[NoteNoPower]

Re: Slight water exposure - now phone won't power on - Samsung Note II - pics

Wow. Yeah none of the right steps were taken that day, trying to power on a device full of water?? First let me state the obvious there can be no retrieval with out the unit powering up. Meanwhile, now that it is dry, it is dry correct? Is there any indication that it is powering on? If you think it's powering on and the screen isn't displaying this should still work. The digitizer and the LED or AMOLD display are separate from one another and it's the digitizer that accepts the touch input. Now when I lost my screen I was lucky that I had a few things in place to make this work. First you will have to be fairly confident that you can navigate the screens with out being able to see them. This includes any screen locks or password inputs along the way. The USB debugging will have to be enabled. That's where I got lucky because I always kept it enabled. Finding it without being able to see even if you know where it is will be challenging. From there you can follow the YouTube video and display the screen on you PC or laptop. Everything is cake from there.

I don't think that will work in this case. Even though the screen lightens for a second when the power button is pressed, there is no vibration or any other indication that the phone is staying powered up. To test whether there was any USB connection I did a 'tail -f /var/log/syslog' on Ubuntu and then plugged in the phone in. There was no USB-related output at all. Normally any USB device being connected would cause a lot of output to be written to that file.

If I was able to "un-corrode" the area that appears to have been corroded, would that help? I think I read about some corrorsion removal oil but I'm not sure if it would be useful in this case or not. At this point there is no water in the screen area anymore and the only indication of damage is that one small spot on the motherboard.

 

[VidJunky]

Re: Slight water exposure - now phone won't power on - Samsung Note II - pics

Corrosion can cause problems no doubt, however usually the issue with corrosion is that it blocks or restricts the flow of electricity. Not seeing your corroded area, is it something that plugs in or is soldered in? Corrosion on a soldered connection shouldn't cause you that much of an issue unless it's causing the connection to ground out or short between terminals? Anyway, I'm not sure what the file is that you mentioned, but simply powering up the device and plugging it into a PC or laptop should cause the PC or LT to display something saying that it's connected. If not, then you're probably right it isn't staying powered up. At that point you really have very little to loose by using your oil, or just a cotton swab and some IPA, or even a tooth pick to clear away the corrosion and trying it again. Careful picking around in there. Something else you could try is removing the battery and submerging the whole thing in IPA then drying it out again. This would drive out any water that may not be obvious with the added effect of cleaning anything that may have been damaged by the water. Then you want to go back to the rice bag for 24 hrs or more in a warm, not hot place. At the same time your battery may have been damaged by the water as well. Try powering on with the unit plugged into something low powered like a PC or LT. As for the screen not being wet they are pretty resilient but once they're gone they're toast. I have to say that data retrieval is not looking good. One other thing you could try would be to buy a damaged unit from eBay, broken screen, or bad data port, and transfer the memory to that unit. Provided it's just your mother board, or cpu that's damaged the memory could be recoverable. These are all last ditch attempts though and then it comes down to what is what you think your loosing worth to you???

You may also want to do some research on YouTube to see if anyone has a help vid out for recovering data from a non working device or after water damage. If it's possible someone has probably posted a vid on how to do it.