Or is it truly dead? It isn’t my phone, but my SO’s. This is the 4th phone he’s ruined due to moisture and I can’t understand why he doesn’t buy insurance. He’s only had it a few days over three months. :mad:
It is a Samsung Highlight with a touchscreen and he had it in his shorts pocket when we took our dog swimming. It didn’t get totally submerged, but the waves hit it. The phone turns on and can receive calls, but the screen is black. The first time it booted up after a drying attempt (in rice) the boot up screen showed up but nothing else.
A touch screen phone is pretty useless without the screen, and I was wondering if there was anything else we could do before shelling out for a new one. We had just bought a new battery for the thing, too, since the original battery wasn’t holding a charge. :mad:
I’ve had luck with 1) a Shop-Vac to suck out all the water I could, then 2) a hair dryer set on “warm” rather than “hot”. But the key is to get it dry as fast as you can. (Dropped mine in tub at the doggy-wash.)
ETA: The Shop-Vac part, because I forgot that bit.
Yeah, we’re a little past the dry-in-rice or with a shop vac phase; this happened a week ago. Just wondering if I can take it apart and tinker with it and fix it some other way…
I don’t have a way for you to save the phone, but you should probably kick your boyfriend in the nuts. Even if he bought the insurance, there’s usually a deductible associated with it. He needs to either invest in a waterproof phone or stop taking his phones in the water.
That’s what my mom would have done to me as a kid. If I couldn’t take care of my nice things, I didn’t get to have nice things.
There was someone here looking for bombproof earbuds because his/her daughter burned through them so fast. The kid did stuff like twirl her iPod off the end of the chord or something, so had gone through at least a couple of pairs already. My parents wouldn’t have put up with that. If I abused my headphones and wrecked them, then touch titty for Cellphone, no easy replacements. If I wanted to have cool stuff, I had to learn to take proper care of it.
If your phone gets wet, don’t turn it on until you’ve completely dried it first. If you turn it on when it’s still wet, you’ve already lost the battle.
It was on, but I’ve heard you should immediately remove the battery and then try to dry it out. My SO (and he should know this by now) tried to unlock the screen using the power button to check if it was OK. That probably fried it.
It is probably toast. I’d not allow him to have another, but he paid for it and will pay for a new one himself. He is using my 3 year old no-frills phone for now (bonus - it’s purple :D) so maybe that will teach him a lesson. Sad to say, he is a person who is careless with his stuff.
Pulling the battery out ASAP, before activating the screen or any features is your best bet. This advice is better for things like digital cameras, which are usually off when they get wet. But the less the phone gets used before you pull the battery, the better.
I have no idea how serious this relationship is, but if he’s the sort of guy who’s careless with his stuff, he’ll still be careless when you’re sharing expenses, and can’t afford to fix the plumbing because he just had to drop another 3 bills to replace his cell phone again, or 500 because he used the dishwasher door as a seat (again) or…
How about some actual advice? Something I’ve done to revive phones is to immerse it in 99% rubbing alcohol for a few hours, which in theory is supposed to displace the water out of the phone. Remove from the rubbing alcohol, then shake it out and let it air dry overnight.
I’ve had this trick work once flawlessly, and once where the vibrating function died but otherwise worked, then once where it was no damn help at all. (all different phones, and not all my phones) But, if the phone is dead it’s worth trying.
