Chosen Solution
I amazingly brought my iPhone 4s back to life after murdering it in the washing machine on a heavy cycle no less… It was rendered completely dead at the time, would not power on, or be recognized by plugging it into the computer once it was fully dried out. I deemed it a brick and went and got a new phone but later read about the steps to try and recover a water damaged phone… Long story short - found iFixit and saw the price of the liberation kit along with a replacement battery and how well detailed their repair guides were and decided to give it a shot with no real expectations of it surviving. Well… after completely removing the logic board, soaking it in isopropyl alcohol, brushing it with a tooth brush, re-installing it, and then replacing the battery with the one supplied in the kit the entire phone came back to life… honestly could not believe it! Camera works, power button, vibrate switch, volume… all good… even is still recognized by my desktop computer so I was able to go back in and recover my lost photos and videos. Just one major problem so far… I cannot seem to power down the phone now. When I attempt to it starts its normal cycle, but then next thing you know the apple logo appears again and then it just reboots itself. Not sure whats going on here. Any recommendations?
Rice will not add anything except starch to your phone. Professional liquid damage cleaning is required. Shields need to be removed, components underneath the shields cleaned at least with IPA like you did already. At best with a pro ultrasonic. Then corroded components need to be reflowed, may be replaced. Only then you can assess your phone properly. Usually by setting up the board with known good components, then trying the phone in its original housing to compare behavior. It’s usually not worth the time, effort, and cost unless data recovery is key. But hey don’t take my word for it. Toss it in rice.
If you press the home button rapidly does the phone take screen shots of it self? If it does then it is a power button problem. If it doesn’t, either one of your capacitor is shorted or PMIC chip is bad. But i was sure purchasing the “liberation kit” was going to solve the issue. anyways, is not really worth fixing it. but regardless you can turn your problem into someone else problem by selling it on eBay. If not you can always try leaving it in rice over night, either me or some other Asian might come over and fix it. Cheers.
I had the same problem, for me it was a bad dock connector, replaced that and it was good to go.
