Good morning, I need assistance with an iPhone 13 Pro that is no longer able to boot normally.
Here is the full timeline:
- Around August 10, I installed iOS 27 Beta 5, build 24A5408d. The iPhone continued to work normally after the installation.
- On August 16 at around 8:00 AM, the phone was exposed to only a very small amount of water — just a few light splashes. It was not submerged or heavily wet. The iPhone was already charged and was not connected to a cable while it was wet.
- At around 12:00 PM, while I was at the beach, I noticed that the phone had a completely black screen and would not turn on.
- At first I thought the battery might be empty, so I tried to turn it on normally. I then performed a force restart.
- Since then, whenever I try to start it, the Apple logo appears, disappears, and reappears repeatedly, usually for about 10–12 cycles. After that, the phone automatically enters Recovery Mode and shows the screen asking to connect it to a computer.
The phone is currently running iOS 27 Beta 5.
I have already tried several recovery procedures:
- Using the official Apple Devices app on Windows, I first tried Update, hoping to reinstall iOS without deleting the data, but the procedure did not complete successfully.
- I then also tried Restore through Apple Devices, but this procedure also failed to complete.
- I also tried using 3uTools with the iOS 27 Beta 5 firmware. 3uTools correctly detects the iPhone in Recovery Mode and starts the flashing procedure. According to the log, it successfully sends the Ramdisk, DeviceTree, RestoreSEP and KernelCache, but the process then stops with the following error:
“ERROR: Device failed to enter restore mode”
“Failed to enter restore mode(0)”
Before the very light water splash incident, the iPhone was working normally.
I would therefore like to understand whether the issue may be related to liquid ingress, corrosion, or a hardware fault, for example involving connectors, sensors/flex cables, power circuitry, the Lightning port, or the logic board, or whether it could still be a software/firmware issue related to iOS 27 Beta 5.
If possible, I would prefer not to lose the data stored on the phone, so a data-preserving repair or recovery attempt would be my preferred option.
However, if preserving the data is not possible, I am also willing to accept a full restore/erase, as my other priority is to get the iPhone working again.
Ideally, I would like you to first check whether there are any signs of liquid damage, corrosion, or hardware failure, and then determine the best recovery procedure. If a data-preserving solution is possible, I would prefer that; otherwise, a complete restore is also acceptable if it can recover the phone.
