[Sprint Samsung Galaxy S III] nvan7891:
I figured I would share my experience, as I was pretty surprised. I fried an epic 4g touch by setting it down in a miniscule patch of water on a table a while back, so I didn't really have much faith my s3 would pull through.

Here's what happened, and what I did:

I had the PT waterproof case. Long story short, the earpiece membrane tore, and it was thrown in the pool. Didn't notice until I got out. Phone was still powered on, and water was all up inside of the phone, there was condensation on the inside of the camera lenses, etc.

I turned it off, took the back off, pulled the battery and SD card out, and dried up as much water as I could. Once I got home, I unscrewed and removed the 2 back panels and carefully dried up what I could with qtips and paper towel. I had to remove the rear camera block to dry up water underneath it. I then let it sit out all taken apart overnight for a full 12 hours.

The next day, I put everything back together, popped the battery in and plugged in the charger.

Nice, charging animation.

Let it fully charge then powered it on...

Everything seemed to work just fine. I expected the worst, and was quite surprised. I mean, it wasn't just a splash of water, it was literally everywhere throughout the inside of the phone.

The catch - launching any camera apps causes a FC. I'm pretty certain I plugged the rear camera back in correctly, as and I only detached the little connector rectangle in order to get the water under the block. Luckily rear cameras are 25$ on Amazon, and fronts are about 6$. I have one of each on the way so well see how it goes.

I've been using the phone for almost a week since then and everything seems to be working as it should. Speakers, microphones, light sensor, buttons, gyro, touchscreen, SD mount etc. are all fine.

Am I mistakenly under the impression that water logged phones don't usually pull through, or something? I didn't even power it off until at least an hour after the water got in it. It was even rebooted once while filled with water, before I noticed it.

Funny side note - my uncles flip (yes, flip. You can still get flip phones through sprint. He was recently forced by sprint to upgrade from his old brick phone, because they were literally discontinuing support for it on the network. I believe the brick was technically a nextel. It had an *extendable antenna* and no text capabilities. Sprint left him a message and said he had so many days to get a new phone because on X date, his would no longer work lol) phone got thrown into a lake. Apparently it rang when it was called for a full day while it sat on the bottom of the lake, until the battery finally died.

Update: installed new cameras and now it says it cannot connect to them. Before it would just crash.

In case someone out there, at some point in time, for some reason cares: I bought an s3 with a cracked screen off ebay for the motherboard. Swapped the boards and lo, the cameras work perfectly! I moved over the nv data from my board to the new one. I currently have 2 phones which are technically the same phone. Mine isn't getting 3g/4g, only network and wifi. Trying to sort it out but other than that my phone is back to normal, and double the internal storage (cracked s3 was a 32gb, got it for 120$). Total spent - 150$. Actual labor and repair was a breeze, and the replacements cameras were dirt cheap. I have insurance but this way i didn't have to file a claim and the actual repair was pretty fun (to me at least).

So the lesson is: no matter how bad you want to impress your 5 year old nephew, don't let him throw your waterproof phone in the pool.