So many have posted information on the web that has helped me with everything technical from rebuilding my boat carburetor to schematics for my stereo. So I wish to also help those in need of detailed information for free!

My daughter dropped her Samsung SCH-U740 cell phone in the toilet and it was submerged for maybe 2 seconds max. With the way its built I didn't think there was enough time for water to get in to damage it but it did. Of course it was turned on at the time it went in and dead by the time it came out. The last phone this happened to, I was able to dry it out which fixed it. However I couldn't figure out how to open this phone's case to see what was wet inside and what had happened. We purchased a new phone since this one was dead and so I decided to destroy this one to see what was inside. So here are detailed pictures and instructions should you want to open it.

Remove the battery cover and the battery. Place it face down and remove the 6 screws shown below.

The two top screws are hidden under black rubber caps which can be lifted out using a small jewelers screw driver. Be careful they don't fly across the room when removing. BTW I removed the black sticker which was located under the battery to see if there were screws under there. This is why you see a silver plate below where the battery would normally sit.

Now comes the difficult part. The case opens from the bottom by using a screw driver in the 2 slots located along the bottom edge of the phone. You can see in the picture above I just pried upward damaging the case. I just wanted to get it open to figure out how it works. The back phone cover has 2 tabs which insert into the phone front cover bottom edge which is shown below.

So you have to pry the cover outward, using the bottom slots, away from the keyboard to unhook the back phone cover from the phone front shown above to separate the two. Once done there are the same tabs along the side edges so use your fingers to pull the back cover outwards to release them until the back is removed completely from the front.

Now that its open and the rest will show you what I discovered. It looks like below when open.

You can lift the top circuit board by first lifting out the glued down button pads shown on the left and right already lifted out in the picture above. These are for the external side buttons on the phone. Next pry gently left right left right where shown above on the PCB. The board will pivot up.  The one black wire is removed from its socket by pulling down. Its a pin going into a socket shown below. Sorry the picture isn't that good.

Lifting the board looks like this on the back side. If you look on the bottom right on the phone base in the silver area you will see the white stuff where the water entered. I will make a conclusion at the end of the article.

I couldn't figure out how to correctly remove the keypad so I pried it out from the front. After you can see  it was held in place by 5 tabs and it was also glued in place all the way around. One top, two bottom and one each side. The tabs are torn open from my destruction. In conclusion there is no way to remove this other than destruction.

And here is the backside of the keypad. Its completely sealed so no water can possibly enter .

And here is the actual phone touch pad. Its completely sealed in plastic so its impossible for water to damage it from the front or back.

Conclusion:

1. Opening the case from the bottom even correctly will leave marks on the case.

2. Opening the case is pretty much useless.

3. The keyboard is completely protected from water.

4. The battery cover pretty much stops water from entering into the phone body.

5. The only place water entered which caused the damage was the side cover which covers the charging plug. From the outside it looks like it completely seals the opening. From the inside you can see a long slot of light along the edge of the cover when its closed.

And contributed by Mark Tabor... how to open the screen side.

To remove the top section you must remove the outer housing around the hinged area. There is a screw on the back side of the hinge housing at the top of the back near the center. Remove this screw.

Now flip open the phone the narrow way (not to use as a qwerty keyboard, but rather as a regular flip phone), and you see a covered screw - pry out the cover carefully (use a plastic thumb tack or a safety pin maybe), and then take out the screw.

Now, the housing covering the double hinge is ready to be removed. with the phone just as you had it, pull on the housing hard to the hinge side. It should move about a 1/4 inch. Now carefully flip the phone the other way and pull hard again. (not so hard that you think you will break the plastic).

Now you will see the ribbon cable that is wrapped around the hinge parts, allowing the hinge to open both ways while maintaining connectivity, as well as two screws on the hinge mechanism.

Remove these screws, and the screen section should slide out of the hinge.

That's as far as I've gotten. The ribbon cable would need to be unplugged from one end or the other in order to totally disconnect the two main parts of the phone.

And more contributed by Luke Choung... how to open the screen side.

I have some additional information on the top half of the phone for people who might be interested in working on the top portion:
If you want to replace the upper section of the phone for replacing front and main LCD, you have to replace the entire upper section. You cannot replace just the main lcd nor the front lcd individually as the contact ribbon is enclosed in a thin layer of acrylic/glass unto the lcd.

As to taking the upper portion apart:
Flip the phone to text and on the left spine you will see what seems like three separate sections of plastic with two holes in between. The two sections on the ends come apart if you put a thumbtack in it and shove the cover out. You will have to apply a bit of pressure, the smaller portion will most probably go flying off. Once you've gotten the small cover off you'll see a screw, you want to take that out. Once you've gotten the larger cover off you'll see two plastic clips. Just use a standard screwdriver (small) to ease the clips off. Once the clips are off you can start to take apart the plastic cover for the upper section. If you push on the clip end you'll start to see a thin layer of the cover starting to separate and you can go around the whole cover using a small standard screwdriver to get the caps off.

Be gentle.
I went towards the 'hold' button on the side and it came off pretty easily. You'll see some grooves where the cover clips in under the cover. Once you've gotten it off, you'll see that they put sticky green plastic covers over the ribbon connectors and what not. To take off the connector to the bottom half, you can take the green film off and take the ribbon cable out by lifting the brown hinge. The brown plastic hinge lifts towards the opposite end of the cable. There's adhesive on the bottom of the cable so it'll feel like you're about to rip it off, you can use a screwdriver to pry the bottom off more easily. Make sure the brown clip is in the 'UP' position before you yank out the cable. You can do the same for the front lcd connector. The plastic hinge is dark gray and it lifts from the opposite end of the cable.

At this point you would insert a working upper half you've acquired from ebay or whatnot and put everything back.  There is adhesive on the bottom of all the green circuit board so you'll have a good time trying to try that off.

Well hope this helped somebody!!

If so let me know info@lsidave.com