My wife ran her new LG cell phone through the washer and dryer. After it came out, it was dead, so she did the worst possible thing... connected it to the charger. She showed it to me and it looked to me like the LCDs were broken, so I told her it was a goner. Next day she took it to the Verizon kiosk at the mall, to buy a new one. The guy said "they're tough... try it" so she did, and it worked. The LCDs were still useless, but that's because they were full of water; a couple of hours in the sun dried them out. Now everything works, including both LCDs and the camera. She's happy; I'm impressed.
I wonder if they have an immersion sensor. That would be easy, just an unpopulated 0402 part, or even an unconnected pin on an IC if done right. One could shut down most everything to minimize electrolytic damage. An ideal component would be an 0402 gadget that went lo-z when wet and took a long time to dry out, sort of a sponge with end caps, connected into the power supply to shut down everything when the guts were wet.
Is anything like that being done?
John