Help!! my 3ds got drenched in water. I have soaked it in rice for like 2days, and it is working now, fully functional, but the charging light(the orange one) lights up even when not charging.. Is it a problem of the battery? or just my 3ds got messed up by the water?
My 3DS found it's way to the bottom of a semi-dirty pool. And it showed the same symptoms, the orange light is the 3DS refusing to boot because the circuitry is acting properly. Remember all of the crucial components on the motherboard (NAND, CPU, RAM etc) have their connectors protected with an insulator. So it is unlikely that they are damaged, unless you seriously screwed it up. But you did turn it on after it got dropped in water once an that is a big no no. The water may have gone, but the chances are the water in your bottle wasn't pure water, and the dissolved salts would be left on the connectors when the water evaporated, which might cause the 3DS to freak out.
I took mine apart, dried every piece. I also cleaned the electronic connections between parts with methylated spirits. Now my microphone only works some of the time but everything else is fine.
Also if your 3ds turns on, and gives an error after about 20 seconds, your WiFi board might be faulty. You can prevent the error from making your 3DS crash, by turning off wifi with the wireless switch. Try giving the wifi board a bath and a good scrub in methylated spirits, it worked for me.
If your screens are water logged, I'm not sure of the best approach to fixing that, but I spent about half an hour drying each screen before putting it back together, and over time (a few weeks) the water receded. Don't be worried about using the system while the screen is water logged.
If you are good with taking things apart and putting them back together again, and your warranty for your 3DS expired try this. Otherwise if your warranty hasn't yet expired, send it to Nintendo.