My Razr V3m suddenly turned itself off yesterday and wouldn’t turn back on. So I took the cover off to take the battery out and I noticed the water detection sticker had turned 75% red. My phone hasn’t been anywhere near water as far as I can tell and it still works fine.
So either the sticker is lying or a tiny amount of water got in there, but not enough to damage the phone. But either way I’m boned. Frankly, I think the whole thing is a total crock. Is there any sense in reporting the incident to my wireless carrier?
Water can get in via condensation. Say it is sitting on a table in a nice air conditioned room then you pick it up and walk outside in hot, humid weather. No idea if that is sufficient to do this but a possibility.
And frankly I have never even heard of that. I suppose you could call your carrier but I suspect they’d tell you to take it up with the manufacturer. Still…worth a try I suppose.
The stickers are pretty reliable, actually (in terms of not giving false positives for exposure to water), although the only thing they really prove is that the sticker itself was was exposed to water. All it takes is one drop of water on the sticker to make it change color. They’re pretty simple, actually. There’s a top layer of thin, absorbent paper followed by a layer containing water-soluble dye, backed by an adhesive.
My carrier , not sure about yours only gives up to 30 minutes of use after that its the motorola warranty which is about a year from purchase. If the water indicator is red then your pooched.
You have two choices if the phone does not work and i am not sure about either. One is to get a replacement dot from Ebay and simply return the phone and the second is to go through your homeowners insurance and see if they cover it.
Good luck with that. They vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, and possibly even from one phone to another. Some are printed with an unduplicateable security pattern. Plus there’s usually at least two such stickers, one inside the battery compartment and one inside the phone, usually either on the inside of the shell or on the circuit board, which you’d have to disassemble the phone to get to. There is often a third sticker on the back of the battery itself.
Thats why I was’nt sure if it was a viable alternative. I was coming from the position that someone who shells out a lot of money for the phone is not going to settle for hearing that they are going to have to shell out even more cause of moisture probably.
The question is do they open up the phones in motorola or just heave em into the garbage to see if all the dots are red.
Not a clue. If I had to guess, I’d say that if the readily-accessible stickers (under and/or on the battery) are turned, that’s enough for them to claim “water damage” and not bother looking at any interior stickers. OTOH, if the outside stickers are clear, they’ll undoubtedly open the unit to inspect the interior ones.
A while back, my partner’s week-old Motorola RAZR went dead after a container of syrup leaked and the phone had the misfortune of being in the same bag.
When he went to the Verizon shop, the rep could smell syrup, but since the detection stickers were still white, he looked at the account, saw how many years the account had been open, winked, shrugged and said “Eh, either they die in the first week or two or they last forever” and gave him a new phone.
Compare that to the person who was in front of me at the AT&T shop who evidently signed up about a week earlier, and had a dead phone that smelled like chlorine and the stickers were bright red. Sorry Bub, it smells like you changed your mind about that two-year contract and dropped your phone in the pool.
As another incident, my RAZR went through the laundry a couple years ago. The stickers are bright red, but I was able to dry it out and the phone still works today.
So yes, the whole concept of depending solely on a small sticker and whether or not it’s turned red is a bad idea - the OP’s phone apparently got a little wet, per the stickers and is dead. My phone was completely soaked, soaped, rinsed and tumble-dried and is unharmed. My partner’s phone was dunked in syrup, the stickers did not turn red, but the phone died.
But, other than dissecting phones and looking for damp spots, what else do they have to work with?
I dropped an LG cell phone in the toilet once, and when drying it with a hair dryer didn’t work, I bought another battery, and that did work. It must have shorted something in the battery, and I used that phone for about another 1.5 years.
If your phone is still under warranty or you carry insurance on it, it will be shipped to a repair center to be refurbished. It will be opened up there and if the sticker on the board indicates water damage, it’s not covered. You will wind up paying for the replacement.
I once had a conversation that revolved around condensation… It went something like this:
CPG (Cell phone guy) - Well, it could be condensation, and that voids the warantee.
ME - So, if I’m out in the cold all day, then come into a warm, moist building, that can void the warantee.
CPG - Yes.
ME - What else can cause it?
CPG - Leaving the phone outside all night, like in your car.
ME- You’re telling me that I can’t use my mobile phone outside all day, then come back into the house, without finding some way to gradually, in a desert dry location, warm the phone to the inside temperature, it’ll void the warantee. And I can’t have my phone with me on an overnight camping trip.
CPG - ummmmmm… well… if it turns this sticker red, and condensation can do it, then the warantee is void. We just go with what the sticker says.
ME- <rolls eyes>