I need help- Can my wet cell phone be saved?

[LeftyMom]

I have it taken apart as much as I can and sitting on a towel. Is there anything else I can do and how long should I leave it be before I power it up and decide if it's toast or not?

[Midlodemocrat]

1. Don't power it up.

Let it completely dry for a couple of days. You may be able to get it to power up, but then again, you may not.

My son dropped his in the ocean in Puerto Rico - dead as a doornail.

My daughter dropped hers in the pool (read: she was pushed in) - worked fine.

[Call Me Wesley]

2. Put it in an oven,

and heat it up a little bit hotter than room temperature. If your oven has a fan, turn it on. Leave it in there for 3 hours, if it's not dropping wet. That should do the trick.

[LeftyMom]

3. Would putting it in my car work?

I don't think I can control the oven temp below 200 degrees but it's nice and toasty (but not really really hot, since it's only April) in my car in the sun.

[Call Me Wesley]

6. Not direct sun in the car,

this produces way to hot temperatures, and you'll end up with a perfect dry, but also perfect melted cell phone with cooking/leaking batteries. If the car, then put it into a shady place and leave it there for a day, then I suggest you can try to turn it on.

If there's a little chip in the phone (where you store your data, numbers, etc. SIM card) take this out and dry separately.

I've seen cell phones dropped into the lake and they worked fine afterwards. Saltwater is a problem, because of the residues it leaves, but just water should be no problem at all.

[LeftyMom]

8. Okay, my phone is in the car but not in direct sun

We'll see if that works. I hope so, I eally can't afford to replace it at the moment.

[mtnsnake]

5. Don't forget to add mushrooms & not the canned variety either. Saute them

together...phone with receiver side up. Add garlic, and voila! Enjoy!!

[CanuckAmok]

29. No, put it *near* the oven. I have done this many times.

Take your cell apart as much as you can. Take the battery off, and if it's a screw-in type, remove the antenna.

Dry the indivitual parts with a paper towel as much as you can.

Turn the oven up to 375, and open the door about 8".

Put the cellphone and peripherals on the stove, or on the counter next to the oven, and leave it for a couple of hours.

The heat from the oven will draw all the moisture from the cell phone without actually exposing the plastic to potentially damaging levels of heat.

Then...

Allow the cell to resume room temperature away from the oven...

Take the cell and peripherals and put them in a zip-lok bag and put it in the freezer overnight.

If you have some vitamins/pills in the house, see if one of the bottles has the little silica gel packet, and if so, put it in the baggie.

The cold of the freezer draws any moisture the heat didn't take, freezing the battery resets it's "memory". The silica gel packet helps but is not necessary.


I know this sounds goofy, but I have done it many times, and it works like acharm.

[LeftyMom]

30. Good idea

I'll try the freezer part overnight tonight and see if I can track down a silica packet. I can't really leave the oven open with a small boy in the house but it's warming up and drying out nicely in the car.

[Richardo]

4. No. I gave mine a bath in March and it died a slow agonizing death

Seemed OK at first (after an overnight drying) then after a few weeks (yes, weeks) the ringer stopped functioning (vibrate only for incoming calls - you miss a lot of them that way); then it would not accept the SIM card (sometimes).

Big hassle.

Note: the cell phone store people can tell it's been wet so don't try a warranty replacement unless you have insurance. They opened mine up, glanced at it and said "this has been wet". I think theres an indicator that changes color in water.

[southlandshari]

7. Yes

Leave it to dry for a couple of hours. Mine got really wet on the counter when I was doing dishes a week or two ago and I thought it was history. It didn't work at all at first, and took a while to dry, and after it did, it cut off a few times over another few hours, but eventually went back to normal.

:hi:

[trof]

9. Miz t. washed AND dryed the TV remote.

Inadvertantly.
She stripped the sheets off the bed and the remote was in there.
It still works fine.
You might try drying it with a hair dryer on low temp.

[Kellanved]

13. My "best" occasion was a Commodore C64

Hung it up on the laundry line for a few days. It continued to work well until it's retirement.


I witnessed three cellphones getting submerged (thankfully none of them was mine) One in glue, one in beer and one in an "unidentified liquid" (that's what the warranty report said.). None of them survived.

[XemaSab]

10. My colleague spent the day wading in a creek

and her cell phone was DONE.

[IsIt1984Yet]

11. I highly recommend removing the battery.

If you haven't already.

Good luck!

[LeftyMom]

12. Yep, it's disassembled, sitting on a towel and covered in my car

outside of direct sun. I'm hoping that will warm it gently and dry it out.

[bigwillq]

14. How did it get wet?

:shrug:

[LeftyMom]

15. My pants got dirty

I tossed them in the washer, started the load and then reached for my phone to make a call. Oops. Stopped the washer, retrieved the now-damp phone from my pocket, felt stupid.

[bigwillq]

16. My cousin pushed me into a swimming pool

with all my clothes on and my cell phone in my pocket.
It took for a few seconds to come to the surface and get out of the pool. I did it as fast as I could.

My phone never recovered. I tried letting it dry out and using a hair dryer. Nothing.


Good luck. :hug:

[Xithras]

20. Sometimes it's just the battery.

Cellphone batteries are fused to prevent fires and burn out at the slightest sign of a short. One of the first phones I ever immersed died and nothing I could do could get it to power up. A few months later a friend with the same phone was complaining that his battery needed replacement, so I offered him the battery off my old dead phone (which had only been a few months old). His phone wouldn't power up with my battery at all, so out of curiosity I plugged HIS battery into MY old phone. The stupid thing powered right up and worked fine!

Unfortunatly, I already had a new phone by that point. I ended up giving the phone, sans battery, to another friend who's cellphone flew out his car window.

[bigwillq]

21. Jeez, you have better cell phone stories

than I do.

I have some good ones though.



Fell down a sewer
Dropped in a swimming pool
Left in a kids car that lives in New Jersey. Had to have it shipped back to me. It took two months.
Lost in numerous night clubs......


:)

[Xithras]

24. The window thing wasn't mine.

Though I did once leave a phone on top of my car...they don't take to being run over very well.

The one I was referring to belonged to a friend of mine. He tossed his phone onto his dashboard one day, and it went sliding across the car when he made a left. Unfortunately for him, it was a nice day and he had all his windows open :dunce:

[WolverineDG]

22. I washed mine, LeftyMom

dead as a door nail, although it did smell Downy fresh. :(

On the upside, I now have one of those fancy-pants camera phones.

dg

[Xithras]

17. You need moving air over it.

Keeping the air moving will help to prevent corrosion. It's not enough just to dry it out, you need to forcibly remove the humidity from the boards inside.

Do you know anyone with an air compressor? A cleanup attachment (air gun) will do a great job at removing most of the water without allowing any corrosion.

Oh, and this may seem counterintuitive, but you also need to make sure there are no detergents or anything in it. If it went into a washing machine and a lot of water went inside of it, there may be detergents inside as well. These will NOT evaporate out, and will cause the phone to corrode and short. The only fix is to re-immerse the phone in distilled water or an electronics cleaning agent.

No matter what, don't power the phone up for several days.

[Duer 157099]

18. Have you tried taking it to church?

[Roon]

19. Wet cell phones are generally toast eom

eom

[Xipe Totec]

23. Vodka, or better yet, Everclear

Pure alcohol, will pull away the moisture from the circuit boards. 100 proof vodka is relatively clean, but Everclear is 90% pure alcohol. (do not use rubbing alcohol, it has oily impurities that will ruin the circuits). just soak the cell phone in alcohol, then dry it out with paper towels as best you can, and set it aside to finish drying.

Good luck!

[flvegan]

25. Friend of mine rescued her phone from a toilet.

Took it apart, let it dry for a day, put it together, good as new.

[LeftyMom]

26. My aunt killed one of mine in a toilet

But the kid threw the same phone in the pool before that and it was fine.

It's recovering in the car. If you need me, use the house phone.

[flvegan]

27. Great.

Now I gotta go look stuff (like numbers) up.

The car might be a little humid all closed up. Maybe recovering elsewhere would be best. I dunno...I'm in Florida.

[LeftyMom]

28. Inland California. Humidity is not an issue.

To put it mildly.