Oh No! I Dropped My Phone in The... - Comments Page 1

Even the cheapest phones are now water resistant My Moto G3 which costs less than $200 is IPX7 rated.

What about the 99.8% of us that have our phone powered on when it falls in the water? Should we then try to power it off or will the dunking power it off due to shorting out?

after mine went swimming in a pool, I just set it out on a table in the sun for a couple of days (took it inside at night). It worked, and in the interim, I was free do do other things than answer phone calls, etc.

Re: "When possible, purchase 90% (not 70%) isopropyl alcohol." because it contains additives like water!
[I]Rubbing alcohol made using isopropanol is regulated to contains at least 355 mg of sucrose octaacetate (MSDS sheet) and 1.40 mg of denatonium benzoate per 100 ml volume. Isopropyl rubbing alcohol also contains water, stabilizer and may contain colorants.[/I]
http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemicalcomposition/f/What-Are-The-Ingredients-In-Rubbing-Alcohol.htm

I once unknowingly shoveled my phone into a concrete mixer. On missing it I got a friend to ring it. A faint Nokia ringtone was heard under the new lain floor. It remains there.

About 20 years ago my wife dropped her flip phone into the toilet in a restaurant.
Her purse tipped over from the water tank, behind the toilet, and dropped the phone and other things into the toilet. It is a Kyocera 5135 model, and we did use it for many years.
I shook the water out of the phone and when I got home I put it on end on our baseboard heater which was on because it was fall.
As of today the phone still works. Even the original battery is in it and working.
Cheers,
Anton

Get an iPhone.

Would a home food shrink wrap machine work similar to TekDry? Seal-a-Meal etc.

I have a coffee container that keeps the coffee fresh by creating a vacuum and sucking the air out of the container. I wonder if that would work to effectively suck the water out. That plus maybe some silica gel? Fortunately I never have had to try this.

Shark Tank very recently had a presentation for a machine to take care of this. One or more of the Sharks invested...so looks like a remedy is coming.

I'd also like to know what to do if the phone is powered on when it's dropped. Should we try to immediately power it off? My phone is on 99.9% of the time.

I'm not sure how much of this is applicable to new phones, but...

A few years ago, I had a phone with water exposure that, upon powering up after some drying, showed a message like "car mode" or some such and refused to work. Upon googling the problem, I found that some people had reported that they had successfully managed to get out of this mode (removing and reinserting the battery doesn't do it) by sticking something conductive into the phone's charging slot and shorting pins together. Sure enough, this worked great for me and the phone worked perfectly thereafter!

"Get an iPhone."

Why? I've never heard of them being advertised as waterproof. Several brands are water resistant, though.

The iPhone 6S and all the 7s are advertised as water resistant (Apple says splash resistant), but independent tests have showed them to be rather more than that. The worst result of one test was that the speakers never sounded the same after being dunked for 1/2 hour in a glass of water, but other tests don't mention that at all. I'm not taking my 7+ swimming, but I don't worry about dropping it in a puddle or spilling on it and just dropped it in the snow trying to smoke a cigarette and take a picture at the same time the other day with no ill effects. One tester took it completely apart after a series of tests and found no trace of moisture inside.

Charley, fear not, the grammatical police! Either of "have had" or "had" is correct.

The iPhone 6S and all the 7s are advertised as water resistant (Apple says splash resistant), but independent tests have showed them to be rather more than that. The worst result of one test was that the speakers never sounded the same after being dunked for 1/2 hour in a glass of water, but other tests don't mention that at all. I'm not taking my 7+ swimming, but I don't worry about dropping it in a puddle or spilling on it and just dropped it in the snow trying to smoke a cigarette and take a picture at the same time the other day with no ill effects. One tester took it completely apart after a series of tests and found no trace of moisture inside.

I wish I'd read an article like this a few years ago when I dropped an expensive VHF/FM handheld transceiver overboard in 35 feet of water. A diver got it our the next day but I didn't know how to attempt to fix the situation and it "rusted" out. $$$$$$$$$$ :-(

What I have done is that I've placed the wet phone inside a gallon ziplock bag with a container of desicant, such as DampRid. Personally, I buy the cheap stuff from the dollar store. I keep the desicant in its container, put it in the gallon ziplock bag with the phone, making sure to keep the desicant off of the phone, and leave it for 3 days. I haven't had a problem using this, and have about a 75% chance of success.

I would put it in my refrigerator (natural dehydrator) for a few days and let the fridge remove the moisture. Of course if you dumped it in salt water I don't believe anything will help it because of the residual salt will eventually create massive corrosion.

I worked in a plant that had a flood. Drying equipment in ovens was useless. We had to pull a vacuum on them to extract the water. Some equipment was placed in a vapor degreaser with chlorothane vapor at low heat and recovered that way.