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What Has Your Phone Survived?
NotAnIndividual writes "On an ice fishing trip two months ago, I lost my iPhone somewhere in the snow. I searched and searched, but to no avail. But just this weekend when moving the ice hut, lo and behold there it was. I quickly threw it into a bag of rice and placed it under a lamp to defrost. Three hours later I plugged it in. I wasn't expecting much. I mean, really, it had been frozen in snow for the last two months! To my surprise, the Apple logo popped up. I put in the SIM card and voila, my iPhone was back. My apps, my contacts, my music and more importantly my life were back. And this is the same iPhone that I dropped in a cup of coffee a few months ago! This got me wondering how much damage a cell phone can actually take. How have other Slashdot users punished their phones without actually killing them completely?"
news day?
I lost my iPhone while skiing on Mt Hood slopes in February last year. In July I got an email from someone that he had found the phone, charged it and retrieved my email account for it. I let him have it since my insurance had already replaced it.
but if I did, I'd probably leave it in the stove, and the next day is wouldn't be burnt at all and would work perfectly.
My apps, my contacts, my music and more importantly my life were back.
You should really see a dotor about your addiction. I mean, seriously, that's just a phone!
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I had their flip phone from about 4-5 years ago. After about a year the texting got quite difficult as the buttons started to stick and it became difficult to text quickly. One day when I was filling up my car with gas I put my phone on the hood of my car for some reason and then drove off. I realized about 5 minutes later and drove back and someone had run over it. It actually worked BETTER than before as the buttons no longer stuck. It was pretty scratched up though. Later that year in the winter I was digging my car out of the snow on a warm day and it fell out of my pocket and into a giant puddle of water.I took it out, turned it off and let it dry for a day or two near a heat source and it still works to this day. Sweet phone, and if anyone else has this phone and the buttons stick, run it over with your car.
There's practically no difference between being frozen for one day, or arbitrarily long. There are only two dangers: contraction of metal and joints while freezing; and condensation/expansion while thawing. I'm sure the rice helped with the condensation, although putting it under a lamp couldn't have helped; better to warm it as slowly as possible.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
slashdot is mirroring the crazy awesome friday night conversation i'm having at the bar with all my male friends *right now*! and there's no girls here either!
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
I'm *so* glad your iphone survived. Thanks for sharing your inspiring story with us, I can sleep easy tonight knowing full well that another iphone owner out there has found another way to talk about his iphone on slashdot. Thank you, thank you for this.
Realized the iphone didn't have a drive I could mount, Safari didn't have flash, no voice recognition... a battery that can't get through The Dark Knight...
Laid it down on the basement floor and pissed on it.
Still running. Didn't help at all.
Mike
-- Karma whore? You betcha. --
TECHNICALLY you can drop a running circuit into *PURE* water and nothing happens. Water isn't very conductive.
I'm fairly certain that if you tried this, the water would be rendered conductive by dissolving whatever contaminants you happen to have on the surface of the device and you'd still get a short. YMMV.
I was on the third floor of an apartment building, taking pictures of the moon from a balcony when I dropped my Nexus 1. I watched it fall two floors before bouncing two or three times on to another roof, landing in a large puddle under and an extractor fan. I figure it would be dead and climbed down to recover my SIM card. After about 10 minutes of fishing around under the extractor fan in a 4+ inch deep puddle I recovered it, it was still on and in camera mode, not even a scratch on the case. I wiped it off and it's been working fine with no side effects from the fall and bath.
M0571y H@rml355.
My iPhone 2G has survived almost three years of AT&T's spotty reception, their failure to offer a reasonably priced rate plan for people who don't talk much but need data service, their woeful customer service, and their lack of 3G coverage outside metropolitan areas. Other than that, it's been very enjoyable.
Sent from my iPhone
I know it's not a phone, but someone in my scout troop brought his zune 120 on a campout and accidentally left it out on a bench the night it rained. After finding it in a small pool of water, he turned it on to find that it still worked like new.
Cooking isn't just about putting water in things, you know...
Also, rice does indeed appear to be a desiccant, just not as strong a desiccant as purpose-made things like silica gel. It's fairly common to put a few grains of dry rice in a salt shaker to prevent the salt sticking together from moisture.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
In the case of the salt shaker, the rice isn't absorbing moisture (the salt is WAY better at it than the rice is), it's being used for the same function as the bearing in a spray paint can, to break up the clumps mechanically. You could actually use some metal ball bearings for the same purpose (make sure they're bigger than the holes in the shaker, obviously).
Isn't enough that I ruined a pony, making a gift for you?
This got me wondering how much damage a cell phone can actually take.
One of my previous phones was working just fine one minute, and then the next minute it wasn't, and it never worked again. Based on the overwhelming weight of that single anecdote I would have to say that 'none it all' is how much damange a cell phone can actually take and still continue working.
(by a strange coincidence, 'none at all' is exactly how much of a scientific conclusion you can draw from this :)
Hard core coffee drinkers have huge mugs and for some reason they don't like to wash them either.
Wash the mug!?! Are you crazy! Do you have any idea how long it takes to get the perfectly balanced biological film deposited to bring out the full rich coffee experience? Not to mention the saved up oils of coffees past that gets in the pores of the mug!
Where do you come up with this mug washing crazy talk?
I left my blackberry in my pants once when I put them in the washer. The phone was on during the entire cycle. I feared the worst, but put them on the heater for a day, turned it on, and.... it worked. Ok, so for the next two weeks or so buttons would randomly press themselves, and login was occasionally tedious, but it worked - and still does. I'm still pretty amazed that it didn't completely short it out.
Oh, and to you nitwit support people who gaze at that stupid little humidity strip and tell me that it is my fault the phone is crashing all the time.... go hump a lamp post. That strip turns pink when it's just somewhat humid outside. Since submerging a phone in water for about 20 minutes doesn't kill it, I'd like you to support your piece of crap hardware like you promised you would.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The worst for me would have been my old Motorola Razr that survived a full cycle in the washing machine, then tumbled dry. I left it off and let it dry for a week before trying to power it back on - and not a thing wrong with it.
Down with the career politician! SUPPORT TERM LIMITS
Satan phone is more like a windows mobile phone. You're pretty much free to do whatever you want but you're eventually going to be punished for it.
What has my iPhone phone survived?
After spending hours trying to work out how to get my iPhone to run more than on aPplication at once, I thought sod it, and proceeded to nail my iPhone to a wooden cross.
Three days later, I picked it up again. I wasn't expecting much. I mean, really, I'd shoved a nail right through the almighty touchscreen! To my surprise, the aPple logo popped up. My apps, my contacts, my music and more importantly my life were back.
Life wouldn't be worth living if I hadn't discovered the iPhone.