A phone at the bottom of the pool at a Saturday braai. A wave at uMhlanga that came in higher than it looked. The toilet, more often than anyone admits. It happens, and what you do in the next ten minutes matters more than any IP rating printed on the box.
The short version: switch it off, do not charge it, dry what you can reach, and get it looked at quickly. The longer version below explains why, including the two things Durban owners most often get wrong. Rice, and the sea.
Do this right now
- Get it out and switch it off. Water on its own does less harm than people think. Water plus electricity is what kills a board. Hold the side key and volume down, tap Power off, and leave it off. If it has already gone dark, do not keep pressing the button to see if it still works.
- Do not plug anything in. Samsung’s guidance is blunt: do not connect a charger or any accessory until the phone is completely dry. Current across wet contacts corrodes the port and can short the board.
- Strip it. Case off, SIM tray out. Both trap water against the phone.
- Wipe and drain. Dry the outside with a soft, clean cloth, then gently shake the phone five to ten times with the charging port facing down. That is Samsung’s own method for getting water out of the port.
- Dry it with cool, moving air. In front of a fan is ideal. Not a hairdryer on hot, not the oven, not a sunny windowsill. Heat pushes moisture deeper and stresses the battery.
- If it went into the sea or a pool, keep reading. Salt and chlorine change the plan.
Salt water is a different animal
Samsung tests water resistance in fresh water only. Its support pages say plainly: do not expose the phone to salt water, pool water, soapy water, oils, sunscreen or hand sanitiser. That list reads like a day at the beach in Durban, which is exactly the point. The rating was never designed for our coastline.
Salt is the real enemy. It stays behind after the water evaporates, it blocks the microphone and speaker, and it keeps eating the board long after the phone feels dry. Samsung’s official advice for salt water exposure sounds odd but is correct: rinse the phone in clean fresh water, then dry it thoroughly. A short fresh rinse is far better than leaving salt sealed inside.
A phone that went into the sea needs professional cleaning more urgently than one dropped in a basin. Treat it as a today problem, not a this-week problem.
What IP67 and IP68 actually cover
- IP68, carried by the Galaxy S series from the S7 right through to the current models, means the phone survived 30 minutes in 1.5 metres of still, fresh water in a lab.
- IP67, found on many A series phones including the A35 5G, A52 5G, A54 5G and A56 5G, means 30 minutes at 1 metre.
- Foldables are their own story. The Z Flip3 to Flip5 and Fold3 to Fold5 are rated IPX8: water resistant, with no dust rating at all. The Z Flip6 and Flip7 and the Fold6 and Fold7 carry IP48, where the 4 means protection against solid objects larger than one millimetre. Still not dust-tight, and beach sand will find the hinge.
- Many entry-level models have no rating. If your phone does not appear on Samsung’s official list, assume it has none.
Two words in the fine print carry all the weight: fresh and new. The tests use fresh water and a factory-fresh phone. Neither describes your phone after two years in a pocket.
That rating has probably faded
This is Samsung’s own wording: water resistance “is not permanent and may diminish over time because of normal wear and tear”. The same page warns that chips and cracks can significantly reduce it.
The seal on a Galaxy is adhesive and rubber gaskets, nothing more. Every drop, every knock, every afternoon on a hot dashboard weakens it slightly. A cracked screen or shattered back glass does not weaken the seal, it removes it. If yours is cracked, a proper screen replacement or back cover replacement fitted with fresh adhesive is the only way to close the phone up correctly again.
So do not give an older phone the benefit of the doubt because the box said IP68 in 2021. The lab phone and your phone parted ways a long time ago.
Skip the rice
The rice trick has been measured, and it fails. In the most cited test, run by the phone-drying company TekDry, handsets left in rice for 48 hours gave up only around 13 percent of the water inside them. That was slower than simply leaving the phone out in open air. Rice never touches the water that matters, the thin film sitting on the board under the shielding.
It can also make things worse. Rice sheds starch and dust into the charging port, and Apple now formally warns iPhone owners off the trick for exactly that reason. The physics is no different on a Galaxy.
The biggest cost is time. Two days in a rice bag is two days of corrosion working undisturbed while you wait for a miracle. Airflow and a bench assessment beat rice every single time.
Corrosion does not wait for symptoms
Water starts two processes the moment it gets inside. While power flows, it shorts circuits. And with or without power, the minerals in it begin corroding copper traces, connector pins and solder joints. That corrosion carries on after the phone feels dry, because the residue stays on the board.
This is why water-damaged phones so often die days or weeks after the accident. “It still works” only ever means “it works today”. We see it every summer: a phone that shrugged off the pool in December arrives dead in January. Sea water compresses that timeline from weeks to days.
The battery deserves its own mention. A battery that has been submerged should be inspected, not trusted. Swelling, sudden shutdowns or wild percentage jumps after a dunking are reasons to book a battery replacement rather than to wait and hope.
What a proper assessment involves
When a wet Galaxy comes across our counter, the first job is opening it and disconnecting the battery, which cuts the power that feeds corrosion. From there:
- Inspect the board under magnification and check the liquid damage indicators to map exactly where the water went.
- Clean the board, in an ultrasonic bath with high-purity solution where needed, to lift corrosion off components and out from under shields no cloth can reach.
- Test and replace what the water took. The charging port is the most common casualty, since it sits at the water’s front door.
- Reseal the phone with new adhesive on reassembly.
The earlier this happens, the more there is left to save. Even in the worst cases, a board clean is often the difference between losing your photos and keeping them.
We have repaired Samsungs in Umhlanga since 2007, and we are the samsung.com-listed screen repair partner for Durban. We work on the full range, from a Galaxy S24 Ultra screen down to entry-level A series handsets, and every service is on our live price list, which always shows today’s pricing.
Questions people ask
My phone fell in the sea but works fine. Do I still need to do anything?
Yes. The salt is still inside it. Follow Samsung’s advice: a brief rinse in clean fresh water, a thorough dry, then switch it off and have it assessed. Salt keeps corroding whether symptoms show or not, and sea water failures often arrive a week or two later.
The moisture icon will not go away. Can I charge through the cable?
No, and the phone will block you anyway. Samsung disables cable charging while moisture is detected. Wipe the port, shake it out facing down and give the phone an hour or two in front of a fan; Samsung says the moisture normally evaporates in that time. Wireless charging still works if you are stuck. If the icon persists for days on a bone-dry phone, the port itself is probably dirty or corroded, which is a job for a charging port repair.
Is a water-damaged Samsung worth repairing?
Often, and the odds mostly come down to speed. A phone opened and cleaned within a day or two usually needs far less work than one that sat in a drawer for a fortnight. An assessment tells you exactly what the water reached before you commit to anything, so you decide with facts rather than guesses.
My phone is IP68. Can I swim with it?
Samsung says no, and so do we. The rating covers a still, fresh-water dunk on a brand-new phone, not lengths in a chlorinated pool or a swim at the beach. Both are on Samsung’s do-not-expose list, and the seal weakens with every month and every drop. Treat the rating as crash protection for accidents, not an invitation.
