Chocolate is NOT a cure-all: Is my Nano hosed?

3 days ago, I took Moon Unit to the orthodontist. As this made her miss school lunch, I got her Wendy’s drive-through.

Halfway back to school, I hear “OH NO. I got Frosty on your earbud cord!!”.

I checked… and it turned out the Frosty had gotten on the earbud, half the contents of the purse it was in, and the Nano itself. Sigh.

I took everything home, dumped out the purse, scrubbed the lining as best I could (as it is one of Those purses, too expensive to let a bit of Frosty ruin it), removed the case from the Nano, and wiped everything down with a tissue that was BARELY moist.

Let it dry for a bit, tried it, and all was good.

Until today, when I tried to plug it into the cable to charge it. No good. No connection whatsoever. So I looked, and there was some gunge inside, messing up some of the contacts for the plug.

Typo Knig helpfully swabbed at the contacts with a Q-tip dipped in rubbing alcohol. We let it dry for a bit, then reconnected it. Success!

Only, now the screen has become mottled. Apparently some droplets either affected the light source, or are actually behind the screen. Argh!

Any chance they will just evaporate and all will be fine?

It works - I tried it and it plays music, though the screen seems a bit dimmer than it was. I increased the brightness settings and that seems to have helped.

I got thrown in a swimming pool for pouring ice cold beer down a friends butt crack a couple of times and had my phone in my pocket. I had also poured a whole bunch down my throat during the day.

Went to my room and took it apart as much as possible and turned the hair dryer (on low setting) on it for a few hours. It lasted a couple more years before dying.

Ouch!! Glad your phone survived!! A friend whose toddler sent her iPhone into maple syrup found the phone survived also.

My iPod seems to still be working, though the backlit screen, when there’s not a lot of stuff displayed, looks like an odd mottled pattern - say, a monochrome map with backlighting, or sun shining through a very cloudy sky. Fortunately I don’t watch videos on it much!

Someone I knew talked about putting a phone that was wet into a sealed container of rice for a few days. Another person I knew tried it and it worked on her phone, so it might for your Nano.

Once I had to go on a business trip that was going to last three months total, the first 5 weeks were in a single place. On the first leg of the trip, my back was killing me, so I put my laptop inside the suitcase, within its carrying case.

There was a bottle of shampoo in that suitcase. It was upside-down in a tied bag, which was upside-down into a second tied plastic bag, with a third upside-down tied bag on top. And yet, somehow (cough cough) that shampoo bottle got out of its multiple bags, its top ripped off, and its mouth got into the carrying case. There was H&S all over and inside my computer, nothing else was affected. The computer was generally fine except for the display, which was shot to hell.

The IT guys at the factory I was visiting gave me a temporary replacement, washed mine with distilled water (made and used in the factory) enough times that bubbles stopped forming and seven more (traditional chemist’s recipe for “enough times”), then let it dry. Fixed!