Re: iphone 5s water damage best recovery method?
I can't tell you if there is hope. I dropped my first iPhone, a 3, in a bucket of water and put it in rice. Oh, yeah, I also put it in a toaster oven and cooked it. I don't recommend that method. I said something like "You left me in a hot car". I sent it back and got a new one. Next time it was a 5s and a kitten I was fostering knocked it in the bathtub. I got it out really fast but it was wet and wouldn't do much so I shut it off. I read a lot and one reputable source had purposefully dropped phones in water and then tried to restore them. They said taking it apart and drying it on a shelf was preferable to the rice treatment (and definitely better than baking it). I took mine apart using utube and let it dry for a while. WHen I put it back together, it worked - except for the phone, that is. Or wifi. I read that that was usually an antenae problem, which entailed taking the battery out. I had not gone that deep. So, I never went farther, although I still think about it when I am particularly annoyed with Apple and iPhone 6. I particularly was unhappy to spend $900 on a new phone and find I was not "allowed" to restore my music. I had a large library and when I moved I donated all my CDs to the Humane Society, so I could NOT "just recopy them" as I was instructed to do.
So, I don't have an answer, but it is worth a try. I am not that dexterous and just didn't want to do it again, plus I use it as an ipod since Apple decided I couldn't have my old library of music (which I had already spent a vast amount of time ripping from CDs and would not ever have the time or patience to do that again). Good luck.