How to fix a cell phone that took a dip

This is based on my own experience.
It has worked twice when used.
When a cell phone is dropped in water it is finished. You have to buy another one - unless you had insurance for that.

CASE EXAMPLE 1)
My daughter was out in the driveway - and there is a big puddle that fills with water, about 2 inches deep when it rains. One day.. her and a group of friends were goofing around it.. and her cell phone fell in the damn thing.
OMFG!! it was the end of the world.
A teenager with a broken cell phone.
A dad with an impossible repair of electronics ruined. So I thought about it for a day... and used common sense. The common sense was that the water in the thing was shorting out the paths that the electricity was traveling through it. If you could remove the water.. it should again function. But how to remove the moisture? Cant disassemble it and blow it off. The chances of putting it back together again and working are slim. So... I put it in the dehydrator. The same machine that turns beef into beef jerky. And you Know it worked! After 12 hours.. it worked like new.

CASE EXAMPLE 2)
Diana's best friend lost her cell phone - It showed up in our back yard in the spring - after the snow melted. It was toast. You guessed right. After 12 hours in the dehydrator it worked. I only have these two examples to share, so I don't know if it works 100% of the time.. Hope this information is useful.

First thing to do is to immediately TAKE THE BATTERY OUT of the unit. This will stop the electrolysis action and resulting corrosion of having the battery voltage applied to the circuit boards.

Then dry it out. Like tsaw says, good chance it will live again!

Jim

Great idea.
I also have seen them pack them in a bed of rice.

darroll said:

Great idea.
I also have seen them pack them in a bed of rice.

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Hmmm I've heard that before. But a search of the topic didn't turn up anything.

I was told that the battery could be removed and the phone laid keyboard down at the back of the refrigerator on the top shelf for 24 hours and it would work again, too.

Interesting Tom . I would have never thought about using a dehydrator .

I just have one of them cheap 20 dollar ones that you buy minutes for . I,ve had the same one for 10 years or so its been dropped in the river a couple of times while fishing , ran over with my tractor more then once , dropped on concrete from 20 feet up & still works good as new & only need to charge it once a week . Plus I just got 2000 free minutes

Granted I dont talk on the phone near as much as most folks , wouldn,t know how to text if I wanted to , But sure seems like a lot of phone for 20 bucks , bad thing is I,m sure I,ll never be able to replace it as I,m sure its obsolete .

I have an LG phone that went through a complete washing machine cycle. I also thought it was trashed, but took the battery out and left it over an AC register overnight. The next morning the phone worked but the screen was fuzzy around the edges. After the second day the screen cleared up and the phone seems to be as good as new.

Been about a month since it happened and the phone is still going strong.

Bob

My youngest daughter seems to be harder on cell phones than that gorilla was with Samsonite luggage in those ads in the early 70's. She's on several soccer teams and I suppose between getting banged around in her backpack and soaked with sweat, they have lasted an average of 3 months each.

I was so pissed yesterday when her latest phone, a Blackberry Pearl (that actually still looks new) quit. It would act like it's starting up and then would go off. I thought it was a bad battery, so I bought her a new battery. That was a waste of $10. Upon further investigation, it is showing that dreaded red dot inside the battery cover which means water damage.

No matter what, the damn thing won't work. She hasn't had this phone long enough to have accidentally jumped in the pool with it or anything like that. It has to simply be from being in a sweaty pocket. That sucks! The warranty is completely voided when that red dot shows. I'm going to try whatever I can to try to get it to work since it seemed to be a nice phone and is nearly new. However, she needed a phone, so I went and bough her yet another phone yesterday.

I bought her a Samsung "Rugby II" phone. They claim that it is "military grade" (whatever the hell that is), and that they had a professional hockey team play 10 minutes of hockey using the phone as a puck. She doesn't need a smart phone, so it seemed like it would fit the bill. I certainly hope so!! Anyone else use this phone? All I know is that it looks decent and has an extremely loud speaker phone.

My brother upgraded to an iPhone a few days ago. Yesterday he showed it to me with this case that the gal sold him and told him he could drop it from 10 feet and the case would protect the phone.
The case made the phone bigger than i would have liked but like my bro said, he's hard on phones so it was worth it.
Then last night he was tieing up his boat, pulled on a rope, lost his footing and fell in the water. His iPhone in the protective case was in his pocket. It protects the phone from falls but not from water. Now he's hoping the phone will work once it dries out.

We had one go thru the washer. My son called the phone company; they said to pull the battery out and place it in a container full of rice. The dry rice is suppossed to help absorb the moisture.

He had tried putting it on the charger, powering it on ect already though. That phone did not recover.

Remember those damn beepers.
We had to order new ones about every other month.
They got flushed, plugged up the pipes.
They got used for hammers.
They got used for blocks of wood.
They got ran over in the parking lot.
They ended up at the bottom of the pool.
Nothing you could do to save those damn things, this is the reason that they don’t make them anymore.
They all got lost anyway.

Doc said:

My brother upgraded to an iPhone a few days ago. Yesterday he showed it to me with this case that the gal sold him and told him he could drop it from 10 feet and the case would protect the phone.
The case made the phone bigger than i would have liked but like my bro said, he's hard on phones so it was worth it.
Then last night he was tieing up his boat, pulled on a rope, lost his footing and fell in the water. His iPhone in the protective case was in his pocket. It protects the phone from falls but not from water. Now he's hoping the phone will work once it dries out.

Click to expand...

I purchased an Otterbox for my Blackberry. It makes the phone kinda klunky, but it's well protected. I don't want to chance a 10-foot-drop-test, but it does take bumps quite well.

I figured spending $50 to protect a $600 phone wasn't a bad investment.

I got an otter box for my blackbery curve.

mak2 said:

I got an otter box for my blackbery curve.

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LOL, I got one for my wife and oldest daughter, but I wouldn't ever consider putting my phone in a full sized brick. Especially one that is simply a brick, and nothing more. I had an executive in charge of a huge company turn me on to a Mophie. It's a reasonably sized protective case (read; about 1/4 the size of the brick-box), and it is a polymer battery that will completely charge my phone almost 2 full times if I run out of battery power. I've never needed to look for a charge no matter how much I use my phone now. I tease my assistant who has a pink Otterbrick that it ought to charge her phone for months at a time.

I don't know if they make Mophie cases for other phones, but I've definitely given it several waist and higher drops on asphalt with no issues. I have the Zagg screen cover and it completely protected the screen when I stuck my foot out to try to break the fall of my iPhone but only managed to punt it and make it slide 10' or more on it's screen. That made me a full Zagg believer. I bought one for my wife's Nook and daughter's Kindle after that.