A soaked handheld, a black-screen TV, a laptop that won't charge
Three broken things, asked on a public repair forum this week.
A soaked handheld. Two of them, a week and a half in a wet bag. One dead, one with bad brightness. First move: stop pressing power. Every try pushes current through water; that is what eats boards. Open it, pull the battery, look for white or green fuzz on the contacts and connectors. Scrub with 90%+ isopropyl alcohol. Rice never reaches the parts that matter. Dry it fully; try a known-good battery.
A black-screen TV, sound still on. First move: a flashlight at an angle, in a dark room. Faint images mean the backlight is the fault. Nothing at all means the fault is upstream. One test tells you which half to open.
A laptop that won't charge. “Repair or replace the port?” First move: swap the cable and the brick, same wattage. Then look in the port with a light: lint sits at the bottom and stops the plug seating. Wood or plastic pick, no metal, no liquid. Still loose, or dead on a good charger? Then it's a port question.
Stop, shine, swap. None of them a purchase yet. Cheapest test first, parts last.
If it's your thing that broke, tell me what it is and what it did when it quit. First check is free.