Water and Phones

Every month I team up with U.S. Cellular and share a little about my Samsung Galaxy S6 Smart Phone.  This is one of those posts.  If you have a kid or grand kid with a smart phone you might want to check out this parent child agreement on cell phone use.  I think it would be very useful when opening a discussion on phone safety with your children. You can find that here.

Years back when Kelli was a cheerleader for Upper Iowa University she was cheering at a football game.  It was lightly drizzling.  The game went on so the cheerleaders continued to cheer.  Eventually the sky opened and it poured.  Kelli’s cell phone was in her back pack under the bleachers.  It turns out that the rain dripped off the bleachers onto her bag getting her phone wet..and you guessed it.  Her phone quit working.  We weren’t able to salvage it.  Luckily phones are a little better now days and often problem with a wet phone can be averted.

According to a recent U.S. Cellular survey, 65 percent of people would rather live without TV than without their smartphone. With statistics like that it’s important to know what to do if your phone should get wet.

The key to success is act quickly to avoid further damage. What to do first if you drop your phone in the water:

Don’t panic, and retrieve the phone as soon as possible. Many people worry that contacts, photos and other data may be gone forever.  Their first reactions are sometimes to frantically press all the buttons, attempt to fix it with a hair dryer, or even stick it in the oven to dry. However, none of these options have been shown to work that well.

The best tips to take to save a waterlogged cell phone:

–Act fast.  Retrieve the smartphone as quickly as possible, taking it out of the water right away. The longer it’s submerged in liquid, the more likely it is to be irrevocably damaged.

–Take out the battery. Don’t “test” the phone to see if it still works by turning it on and off because pressing the screen and buttons could push liquid farther into the device. The critical first steps are to power off the phone and take out the battery. If the phone, such as the iPhone 6s, doesn’t have a removable battery, power off the device right away to prevent a possible short circuit.

–Remove any accessories. Take off any cases or covers, and remove all memory cards, headsets or other accessories. Take out the SIM card and carefully dry it off with a soft towel or cloth. The SIM card may retain data even if the waterlogged phone itself is damaged.

–Wipe down the smartphone. Carefully wipe the phone with a clean, soft towel or cloth. Try to avoid getting water into the phone’s cracks, indentations, ports or other openings. If water is trapped in a crevice, use a can of compressed air to blow it out, taking care not to blow the water further inside the phone.

–Use a fan. A fan can blow air across the phone’s openings to help dry it out, so keep it blowing for at least a few hours.

–Take the phone to your wireless carrier. If these methods don’t effectively fix the phone, don’t despair. Sometimes it can be fixed even when home remedies haven’t worked. Be honest about what happened and walk an associate or technician through the steps that were already taken to try and fix it.

What to not do:

Don’t use heat. It may be tempting to use a hair dryer, microwave or oven to dry off the phone, but the heat can quickly warp the phone’s circuits and melt its delicate internal components.

Things to consider before our phones get wet:

The most important step people can take, even before the phone gets wet, is to make sure important data, photos and contacts are backed up. If the phone is not recoverable, at least your important information and memories are saved.

Kelli’s phone and all that was in it was lost.  She was heart broken.  Hopefully should this even happen to you, you can follow these easy tips and avoid the hassle of getting a new phone.