[Zenfone 2 Laser Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Betrem:
Hi everyone! I'm a noob which made a mess with a brand new asus Ze550KL: I accidentally tossed it inside the toilet (possible water damage). :eek:

More precisely, this is my problem, I hope someone may help me ;).

THE CURRENT SITUATION

Now it's totally dead. I don't know if it is a broken hardware problem or if it just hardbricked, and I don't know how to find it out since the device is toally dead (not turning on, not responding to POWER ON + VOLUME and not entering recovery/fastboot mode, no lights) except from the fact my pc recognizes it as "QHSUSB_BULK" when connected via USB, but can't browse the files inside nor do anything else). Also I think the battery receives energy when connected with the recharge cable to the wall, since the alternator gets hot like usual.

THE SYMPTOMS BEFORE SILENCE

I don't know if it helps you to know, but the dying process was this: The device fell in the water while turned on. I picked it up immediately and it seemes still working, but the touch screen was not reacting to my fingers touch. I immediately pulled out the battery and dried every reachable spot with a towel. I noticed that the water did not get inside the back case, so after a few minutes I tried to insert again the battery: as soon as the battery touched the electrical contacts the device started to vibrate like hell, so I immediately pulled it out again. I put the device in a hot place a few more minutes, than tried again with the battery: it didn't vibrate, I tryied to power it on and it could reach a logo screen with some words on the toop. Unfortunately I don't remeber if it was "Fastboot" or "recovery", but it must have been one of the two. It remained stuck on this screen, so i turned it off again.

The sequent day I had the bad surprise: it was totally dead. I put it in a warm place and waited a lor of days. After 2 weeks it's now still totally dead.

MY QUESTION

Before spending money I'd like to kwow if its just a software problem (hard brick due to cotact with water) or hardware problem, and in this last case what was damaged. How to do it? More precisely:

1) I read a lot of guides about unbricking but I couldn't find anything related to the ze550kl for the case it's totally dead, with no possibility to enter recovery mode or fastboot mode. Is there a way I can make a check-up via PC? How can I solve the "QHSUSB_BULK" problem (since i read some guides, but nothing related to ze550kl with screen not turning on at all).

2) In case it's hardware damaged, how can I understand what the water damaged precisely (in order to know if it's worth repairing or not)?

Thank you very much!!! :laugh:

EDIT (08/11/16):

Maybe I made one step towards the solution (if there's any). In fact I installed the qualcomm processor drivers on my laptop, so now it recognizes the devise as "Qualcomm HS-USB QDLoader 9008 (COM3)" when connected via USB. This means that I can connect to the device using QFIL (software used for unbricking via usb, explained here : androidbrick.com/ultimate-qualcomm-snapdragon-unbrick-guide-snapdragons-are-unbrickable-qhsusb_dload_qpst_qfil/).

However the problem is that QFIL returns this error message when trying to download something on the device:

"Download Fail:System.Exception: Unable to download Flash Programmer using Sahara Protocol

in QC.QMSLPhone.Phone.QPHONEMS_SaharaArmPrgDownload(String sFileName)

in QC.SwDownloadDLL.SwDownload.QPHONEMSSaharaDownloadArmPrg(UInt64& version, String armPrgPath)

Download Fail:Sahara FailSahara Fail

Finish Download".

Using google search I think it may be because also that part of the ROM which allows to download files on the device via USB is corrupted. Is that true? Do you have any solutions?

Thank you again!!! ;)

Grazie! ;)