Right now, my Blackberry Bold 9000 after going through a hailstorm, is not working properly. I removed the battery right away and dried it out, however it still didn’t work properly. Initially the trackball had issues, and then I noticed very small salt residue at the trackball system’s output pins. So I drenched it in a 91% isopropyl alcohol solution and scrubbed it several times, after that, the trackball was working fine. First I tried just cleaning it in the alcohol, but you would see the board still had salt left over on it, so I scrubbed it further.

Later, the phone started having LCD issues. The screen would sometimes display funky, upside down, inside out, scrambled images. After doing a parts switch with a working blackberry I found out the LCD screen was bad. I tried fixing the LCD screen itself, but its a pain taking those apart and often times they break in the process, I did end up damaging that part. After ordering a new one on eBay, everything was fine for about a week. However, now one day it just wouldn’t turn on, so I put it on charger and it started up and showed the battery was completely dead. After some time it would shut off again even while being on charger.

Here’s whats going on with water damaged electronics. If you have a water damaged iPhone or BlackBerry, or other electronic device like a camera or whatever, here’s the issue. The water, even if you dry it up, leaves behind dissolved salts and other junk. Those salts attract more moisture causing more of a problem. Especially if it comes in contact with sea water which is more salty, that can become a bigger issue. How do you solve it?

1. Remove all water sensitive components that are mechanical or electro-mechanical such as relays, potentiometers, speakers, etc.
2. Remove all voltage sources such as batteries. Discharge all capacitors. Cell phones and other computerized devices often have a small battery in them. The blackberry has one the size of a hearing aid battery. Remove them.
3. Place the electronic PCB in a cleaning solution bath, I would suggest rubbing alcohol of some sort. And then the board has to be vibrated at high frequency (ultrasonic).

The thing is with the BlackBerry, there are soldered on metal covers on the PCB, these I would think should be removed, but the ultrasonic cleaning may still work with them on. They’re a pain to remove, thats the problem. I think RIMM does that for proprietary reasons. Other thing is that diodes and other large devices can sometimes suffer the constant pounding of the ultrasonic vibrations. Either remove these components from the board, or use an electronic controlled ultrasonic cleaner. These will start out a frequency of like 25khz, jump up to maybe 90khz, then drop down at random frequencies depending on the model.

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