I split some water on my cell phone and now if won’t turn on. The phone is past the warranty. I am hoping it will work when it dries better. Is there anything I can do to fix it?
If it was just water, remove the battery pack IMMEDIATELY. If at all possible, take the case apart carefully (phones which are designed with interchangeable cases are easy; others are problematic) Allow the phone to sit in a dry area for a few days. It will dry out much faster if you can get it apart. Heating it will also help drive out moisture, but you risk other kinds of damage, so do so at your own risk. Anything higher than about 75 C is asking for trouble. That’s about all you can do. Well, that, and keep your fingers crossed.
Thanks. Would it be a good idea or a bad idea to put it in front of a fan?
A fan might help some. It won’t hurt anything, at any rate. Unless, of course, you get fed up and throw the phone at the fan. Or vice versa.
Sniffs_Markers dropped another cell phone in the toilet. :rolleyes: This time, she pulled the battery pack out right away, and VACCUUMED it.
Very thoroughly. Works fine now.
I’ve also heard that you can wrap it very carefully in a thick towel and put it in the dryer. But if it somehow comes out of the towel it’ll get smashed up in the dryer.
Heck, do a SDMB search on “Giraffes’ Challenge”. that thread links to the original in which a cell phones was dropped into a toilet and recovered.
“Giraffe’s Challenge” was a game based on that OP in which, there was a challenge to drop something in a toilet and retrieve it. The winner was sandwiches in ziplock bags, sent dropped into a toidy then consumed – there are pics on-line… Not that this has any bearing on your question.
Calrification: She vaccuumed the phone very, very thoroughly, not the battery pack (which she just dried off carefully.)
My daughter has sent hers through the washing machine twice. I guess she didn’t think it got clean enough the first time. 
At any rate, once it dried out, it worked fine both times.
I also sent my cell phone through the entire permanent press cycle once. I thought it was a goner, but I just took the battery out and set in in the front dash of my truck for a day or so, and voila!! It woked fine and was clean and shiney to boot.
The cow is sorta out of the barn on this one, but for future reference:
Keep a bottle of isopropanol, the highest purity you can find (which in a drug store will probably be 90%). This stuff is pretty safe, though you can’t drink much, and it does burn. In the 75% purity, it’s called “rubbing alcohol”.
The next time your cellphone or beeper or camera or whatever goes swimming, pull it out immediately, and start alternately shaking it dry and dipping and swishing it in the alcohol. Since alcohol and water mix, the alcohol washes the water away. Alcohol is much better on electronics because it is noncorrosive, nonconducting, and does not facilitate electrolysis or galvanic action (all of which water does). Trying to get all the alcohol out is a much better situation than trying to get all the water out. Plus, it dries much faster.
This procedure is used in the laboratory and is called “drying with alcohol”. Acetone and methyl ethyl ketone also work, but they are much more toxic and dissolve many plastics, paints and adhesives (though for something made of metal that you don’t want to see rust, they’d be fine).
I like the vacuuming, alot. Though if you’re doing it with alcohol, note that alcohol vapors are flammable. Maybe it makes sense to do this outdoors, and don’t do it at all if you are squeemish about losing your eyebrows. On the plus side, I did try vacuuming gasoline once, during the halcyon days of my youth, and was surprised at how small the fire was and how slow it was to start. Vacuum cleaner must have run for a good minute or more…
Former cellphone company employee checking in here.
I’ll agree with everything that’s been said so far, but I’d like to add that the type of water you drop the phone in and if the phone is powered on or off are really the determining factor. If phone was dropped in “soft” (i.e. a low concentration of minerals) water and was powered off, then it most likely will work (to some degree) when it dries out. If it was on, then there’s still a good chance that it’ll work, but the odds of it not working are greater than if it was off. If it was in hardwater then there’s a slightly greater chance of it not working. Saltwater can really do a number on electronics, so that’s an iffy proposition at best.
Cellphones are pretty cheaply made (I also worked in an assembly plant) and they only have a one year warranty because it’s too expensive to make them any better (cellphone companies are already selling their phones at a loss, they hope to make their money back on the airtime charges). If this phone is any kind of “lifeline” device for you, then I would strongly urge you to replace it as soon as you can. I realize that you might not be able to afford to do so, but if you’ve been with your cellphone provider for at least a year and have paid your bill on time, you can probably talk them into giving you at least a discount on a replacement phone simply by calling them up and threatening to cancel your service with them (assuming that any “agreement” you’re on with them has expired).
Whatever you do, do not take the cellphone company’s offer of it’s “equipment replacement plan” unless they’re willing to give you something in writing that states you will get a new phone as a replacement if your current one breaks. The common practice is to send out a “refurbished” phone (i.e. one that was broken and they managed to fix) and this can mean you’ll get handed a lemon. If you do get a lemon, the response to your complaint about it will most likely be, “There’s a whole lotta nuthin’ we can do.” Best bet is to buy the cheapest phone you can afford, and be prepared to replace it every year.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention one other thing: cellphones with SIM cards seem to hate water more than non-SIM card phones. Not sure why.
Are SIM cards essentially EEPROMS? If so, that might explain it.
Here’s some advise by Boyo Jim in an old thread:
"Take the battery out.
Let it soak overnight in distilled water (the idea is to re-dissolve the suger and whatever other crap may have dried across on the circuitry). Then rinse it, or shake it, or try to induce the water to flow over the circuitry (to try and get the various re-dissolved crap out of the phone).
Then let it dry out again. Then put the battery back in, and try again."
http://www.repairfaq.org/REPAIR/F_audiofaqb.html#AUDIOFAQB_008
Don’t know for sure, I didn’t get that far into the whole electronics end of the thing, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Yes, AFAIK. I would assume that they would like taking a bath even less because of the extra contacts required for communication with the SIM are exposed, both in the phone and on the SIM. When I dropped a (former) GSM phone of mine in a glass of my (very hard) tap water, it was recoverable, but I needed a new SIM. The contacts on the SIM corroded very quickly.