What exactly breaks when your iPhone gets wet?

Question

My wife dropped her phone in water and it appears to turn on. I reset it the screen is completely white, but when i slide my finger across the bottom I hear it unlock. Does this just call for the screen to be replaced?

Answer 1

Best wishes on getting the phone back to normal. I too dropped my 16GB brand new iPhone into water within a week and a half of buying it. I realized immediately that it would void the warranty and figured I'd need to spend the full price to get a new one.
My phone never turned itself off when I immersed it. I quickly shook it to get all the water I could out of it, then gently blew some compressed air in the openings. I turned the phone off and put it in a ziplock bag of rice overnight. I wrapped the phone in a tissue to ensure rice didn't get in the openings.
The next morning I turned the phone on and nearly everything was working but I kept getting an error that I was trying to use a device that wasn't compatible with the iPhone. I had a hard time getting anything to play in the iPod function. I fiddled with putting the headset in and out hoping the maybe the headphone jack was wet and I could dry it out. The iPod and youtube started working fine with the headset in but when I took it out I could get no sounds out of the phone (like some people report here when their phone acts like their headset is still in). All along my screen was fine and I could make and receive calls. I kept getting the same error message.
I turned it off again and put it back in the drawer with rice. I couldn't sleep I was so upset about having done this. I got up in the early morning and scheduled an appointment online with a Genius for that afternoon. At that point I took my phone out of the drawer and turned it on and everything worked fine!
I kept my appointment with the Genius and asked him if there was anything I should do and if it's likely it would keep working fine. He told me to be prepared for it to fail by ensuring everything was backed up, but that it may be fine. He also mentioned that he had never seen a phone that was in water look like mine...it looks just like it did out of the box. It's been about 3 weeks and everything is working great.
I hope you have the same success! I have never dropped a phone in water before and was horrified when this one flew out of my hand and into the open toilet!
I love my new phone. I'm actually a long time AT&T customer and had a previous 3G phone that didn't have nearly the functions of this one.