Database Users

Strange but true

Something really weird happened to my O2 mini s. I just saw all the LED lights flash and then the phone vibrated and went blank. I did a soft reset it restart but then the same thing happened. I did a hard reset it was all ok, then when the O2 software began installing it did the same. Flashed all LEDs including the flash led vibrated and went blank. I though it was the battery. Changed the battery and it would refuse to wake up, just switch on all LEDs and keep vibrating. This kept happening for several times, and then suddenly all was ok. Re-installed an all, all is fine now. But I wonder what happened? And will it happen again? Any explanation by anyone would help. Thanks in advance.

This sounds like a hardware fault to me.
Can you think of ANY outside influences? Things like extreme temperature exposure, exposure to high humidity, or very fast changes of temperature or humidity could all cause shorts or low resistance conditions. I don't know that any of these historically lead to the type of fault you experienced specifically in Wizards, but from an electronics standpoint, anything of this nature could cause bizarre but temporary faults. Even dropping it could cause you problems of an unusual nature.
If the answer to any of the above (except dropping) was yes, do this:
Gather up all the desiccant you can find. This stuff can be found in bags of jerky, and in just about any electronics box ever packed. Sometimes I find little "jars" of desiccant in medicine bottles (long-acting antacids, in particular). Put the phone in a plastic zip-top bag in a warm, dry place with all of the desiccant inside and seal it up tight. Leave it for at least 12 hours, but 24 would be better. Throw away the desiccant when you're done.
If you can't come up with an outside cause for the fault, you may just have to chalk it up to the age of these phones. They are far from new. Even if you just bought yours, chances are good that it is refurbished, and electronics, like fruit, will go bad eventually.

Thought so...
Thanks for your detailed reply. I think the temperature would be the reason. I am in India and that too in the Southern part and its been awfully hot these last few days (40 deg. C or more) yesterday I was in my room and had switched on the air conditioning, the phone was near the ac for a while. Then I did switch off the ac, probably this fluctuation caused to form moisture? It was behaving weird but its ok for the time being... for the last 12 hrs or so. I am waiting for 3G services in India before I decide on my new phone, so I hope this lasts for another 6 months. Hope! Thanks again, will try your method if this happens again.

The problem is back and won't go away. Should I bury my phone? Or is there hope? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

If dessication didn't work, you can also try swapping batteries with someone (best to do this while the problem is presenting itself).
You can also try doing a hard reset as a last resort (remember to backup your PIM info!), but I doubt this will do you any good. However, it doesn't cost you anything, and is therefore worth a try.
See if your service carrier offers insurance on your phone. If they do, sign up, and turn it in a week later for replacement. Just remember to wipe out your personal data and remove any HardSPL/Unlocks you might have done.
If insurance fraud is distasteful to you, hit eBay. You can usually score a decent condition Wizard for around $120 USD.

I haven't really tried dessication, but I think its gone beyond that. Batteris I have 3 and none of them worked. Is it easy to open the phone and try and "air" it? Will that help. Unfortunately carriers in this country don't have insurance plans. So that leaves out that last option. And if I have to buy another phone then why... the same one... ;-) Thanks anyways..

Fried N1

A really bad holiday for me, the other day i've turned off my N1 at night and can't be able to boot it again the morning after! If i press the power button all i get is a vibration and it stucks, i can't boot into fastboot or recovery too, and if i live the battery inside it gets really hot, i think about a short circuit

Did your phone get wet by chance?

rcxquake said:
Did your phone get wet by chance?
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I don't think so, but it should be, i was sleeping in a tent (i was in a camping) and it started raining

Well stop trying to make it worse and take out the battery and do the proper drying maintenance on it, maybe you'll get lucky.. if you haven't tried to boot it and mess with it too much already.

Take out the battery, leave the back cover off, and put it in a jar of rice. The rice will help take the moisture out of the phone.
With any luck, your phone should work by tomorrow.

Along similar lines, I was using my N1 the other day (bright sun and temp. above 30 celcius) and it became incredibly warm. I took it out of my pocket to find it smoking. I removed the battery, and left it for an hour.
I came back and put the battery back in, but to my horror it wouldn't power. I tried plugging it in, thinking it may have drained the battery, but to no avail. I now have a very expensive paperweight.
No liquid or anything, and stock rom, locked bootloader. Anyone else seen anything else like it?
Sorry, I don't mean to hijack this thread, it just seemed an appropriate place.

grandmasterethel said:
Along similar lines, I was using my N1 the other day (bright sun and temp. above 30 celcius) and it became incredibly warm. I took it out of my pocket to find it smoking. I removed the battery, and left it for an hour.
I came back and put the battery back in, but to my horror it wouldn't power. I tried plugging it in, thinking it may have drained the battery, but to no avail. I now have a very expensive paperweight.
No liquid or anything, and stock rom, locked bootloader. Anyone else seen anything else like it?
Sorry, I don't mean to hijack this thread, it just seemed an appropriate place.
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You were using it or it was in your pocket?
I was at the pool one day when my daughter was in swim lessons, 35C or so that day and in partial shade, and my N1 got pretty warm just doing normal stuff.. Luckily no magic smoke escaped on mine.

I had it in my pocket, occasionally pulling it out to send a message, but it was in my pocket when I pulled it out to see smoke.
Maybe just my bad luck. I'll send it to HTC and see what they say. They'd better not charge me for a repair.

If the problem is that it got wet then you need to take the battery out and dry it out, maybe in a bag of rice. Leave it for a day or two.
Every time you try to get it to work while it is wet can break it. Even the first time could have broken it completely if it was wet enough. But if it didn't each time you try it again brings more risk of permanent damage.

Clarkster said:
If the problem is that it got wet then you need to take the battery out and dry it out, maybe in a bag of rice. Leave it for a day or two.
Every time you try to get it to work while it is wet can break it. Even the first time could have broken it completely if it was wet enough. But if it didn't each time you try it again brings more risk of permanent damage.
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I think it's broken already next monday i will send it to the technical service

Dropped in water : The Saga Begins

Dropped the Slide in the garbage disposal (yeah), pulled it out, was still on, pulled the battery within 30 seconds.
Dried it out the best I could for about 30mins. I know I shouldnt have but I turned it on, it got to my CM6 lockscreen and froze, after another restart it would not get past the logo.
Fastboot worked but said touchpanel : fail, instead of Touchpanel : Synaptics "XXXX".
So I did complete dissasembly and the board and the panel is in a box of rice.
I will update as I go along for those who may be curious about the effects of a dunk on this device.

OK. First off, that sucks. I have been there a few times myself, and it was worse. One in the toilet, one in the dish water, and one in the swimming pool (deep end). Second, you need to take it completely apart (look for an assembly manual on XDA), use 90% rubbing alcohol to clean the boards without getting any under anything you cant get it out from (this will remove contaminates), and leave out for 24 hours before re-assembly. It sounds simple, but take a lot of attention to detail. I have done this for people about 40 or 50 times (ex-T-Mo employee with a heart), and only lost about 10 of them. If you're up for it shoot me a PM and I will help you as best I can.

I am a repair technician by trade so the assembly was the least of my concerns. I noticed the inside did not get wet very much at all, I think the touchpanel connector got a drop in it, i made sure it was clean and i used a razor to skim a fresh metal surface for all the contact points on the phone. The phone is 100% functional as of right now.
It was quite a scary moment when the panel tested as fail, and the ROM seemed to be MIA.

Wow, only 30 min. I accidentally took my phone into a lake with me one and was swimming around for about 5 min before i remembered it was on me lol. It had alread powered itself off. I gave it 2 days to dry before powering on. A little excessive but at least it was a little longer than 30 min 0_o so lucky nothing fried. Glad your slide is still working
Sent from my T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide using XDA App

i dropped mine in a puddle. immediately tore it apart and placed it in bags of rice. it worked after a day of being in rice. didnt need to do anything else other than that. i did notice some sms and call issues after that but rooting it resolved the issue so i doubt it was a hardware issue

donepate said:
I have done this for people about 40 or 50 times (ex-T-Mo employee with a heart), and only lost about 10 of them. If you're up for it shoot me a PM and I will help you as best I can.
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never dropped a phone in water myself, my g1 hit a puddle once(not deep at all) but i still tore the thing apart and got the battery out before anything bad could happen. i try to help out my custs as much as possible, but so many of them just leave it on and don't think anything is wrong until it stops working a few days later.
the best thing to do is what was mentioned with the alcohol, my uncle dropped his phone in the lake and he turned it on a few times and i was still able to get the thing up and running within a day for him.

Water damaged phone.. Help :(

UPDATE: The phone is magically fixed!
Hey guys!
So i was at a party 2 nights ago, and I lost my S2. I finally found it in the morning, it had been outside all night, and then I realised that it had been raining heavily.
I took the battery, sim card and micro sd card out and placed the phone somewhere warm and let it dry for about a day and a half. I plugged it in earlier, and it started charging fine, and then I turned the phone on.
It booted up. The hardware buttons are working fine, and the touch buttons below the screen also work, but the screen is completely unresponsive
EDIT: Just as I posted this, i got signal, so only problem i can see is the touch-screen
Is there anything I can do, or is this phone screwed?
I cant remember if I have Vodafone's insurance or not, I'm praying to god I do :/

Put it in a bag of rice and let it dry out even more

Look this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1128594
You'll find some tips that might be useful

danstah said:
Put it in a bag of rice and let it dry out even more
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Click to collapse
I was gonna say.... put it in rice. Should dry up faster

Had good result with silicate packets (the little bags in shoeboxes and many electrical goods) and rice. But let everything dry for days and don't reassemble - left my old PMP for 5 days after a toilet swim, still working. Smells great too. Honest.

Thanks for the replies guys. I've now put the phone in a bag of rice so I guess I just have to wait and see.

Lol keep us updated!

The problem could by the fact that the digitizer on capacitive screens are very sensitive, it sounds as if that may have been damaged.l I would think that the only thing you can do is to replace the touch screen, because it is gorilla glass and the fact the entire phone would need dismantling, If it isn't insured I would expect it wouldn't be cheap to get replaced. But you should be thankful that you entire phone didn't die, I mean you were quite lucky there. I broke my old hero by leaving it out side for 5-10 min whilst it was raining.

Bad news guys, its still not working.
Cant believe I let this happen, I need some trousers with tighter pockets for this damn phone! (and perhaps not carry it with me when I'm drinking haha)
Luckily its covered under my home insurance.
Do I get a new one or get it repaired?
Edit: Its also bloody ironic that I had just put a pattern unlock screen on my phone, so now I cant back up the contents because its locked! Is there any way to get round this? Or external ways to control the phone so I can get into it?
Cheers

There's insurance that covers phone water damage?

Hazlynch, you really need to keep it much, much longer than one day in the rice.
Trust me, apart from my aforementioned toilet episode, I've also lost phones and PMPs in the snow - all have worked again, but the shortest dessicating time was 3 days.
One day is simply not enough - not saying 100% it'll work after 5 days, but 100% certain it won't after one.
For the record, lost my Cowon S9 (OLED touchscreen) in a snowdrift - 5 days dessicating and worked - still going strong.

Ah right thanks for that info! From what I heard about the digitizer being sensitive I'm not very hopeful, but it wont harm to leave it in the rice longer.

I wasn't with my S9 either, but it surprised me, especially also being a touchscreen device too.
Remember to disassemble as much as you can from the phone - all cards and battery out but also in the box/bag - you need to expose as much surface area as possible of the device to the dessicant.
Try my silicate bag tip posted earlier too!
Let us know wha'ppen?

Ready to give it a try? How's it looking/feeling?

I managed to find some silica packets like you said so I put them in with the rice.
Just turned it on, but still no touchscreen responce

hazlynch said:
I managed to find some silica packets like you said so I put them in with the rice.
Just turned it on, but still no touchscreen responce
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Shame - not optimistic.. A couple more days won't hurt if you have the patience!

Yeah, I wont be able to get anything done about the insurance stuff for a few days anyway, so I'll leave it in there for longer. Starting to miss it now! Haha.
Oh and thanks again for everyone's help on this!

My situation has taken an unexpected turn... Went into vodafone a couple of weeks ago and explained that the touchscreen had stopped working.
They tried to factory reset and do other things to fix it to no avail, so they sent it off to their repair centre to fix.
I received it back today, with a letter which stated that it was thoroughly tested and inspected, and that they found that the fault had been caused by water damage. They explained that water damage falls outside of the manufacturers warranty and they could not repair it.
They also sent a picture which helped to show the extent of the corrosion, which looked a bit nasty.
I turned on the phone anyway when i recieved it, and to my great surprise... it is working - apparently flawlessly.
So it is a happy ending - and has proved to me how badass this phone is

hazlynch said:
My situation has taken an unexpected turn... Went into vodafone a couple of weeks ago and explained that the touchscreen had stopped working.
They tried to factory reset and do other things to fix it to no avail, so they sent it off to their repair centre to fix.
I received it back today, with a letter which stated that it was thoroughly tested and inspected, and that they found that the fault had been caused by water damage. They explained that water damage falls outside of the manufacturers warranty and they could not repair it.
They also sent a picture which helped to show the extent of the corrosion, which looked a bit nasty.
I turned on the phone anyway when i recieved it, and to my great surprise... it is working - apparently flawlessly.
So it is a happy ending - and has proved to me how badass this phone is
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Click to collapse
This has me worried haha. My SGS2 has recently took a bit of a bath as well. The phone worked perfectly fine after sitting off overnight drying out. However after about 3 days it started random hang up and shut offs. I sent it in to a repair center a week ago and i am just hoping for the best. I dont have high hopes that they will replace it as it was water damage but i suppose its worth a shot for a $600 phone.
If they dont replace/repair it i will be taking it apart and cleaning it in hopes that i can make it work.

Here is my old sgs2 after a dip in the ocean. No insurance either. What you guys think?
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App

[Q] To claim or not to claim? S5 mysteriously survives dive into bubbly bucket.

Hi Everyone
I'd like to start off by apologizing that my first post is a question - as the welcome message so nicely encouraged helpful posts I promise I do have skills (not related to my question though, only software) & in future, when I have time, will hopefully manage to post something helpful. You can have a good lol at the stupid situation I've gotten myself into though.
I've looked over the internet for days but can't seem to find anyone in the exact same situation as myself... In a way I am extremely lucky but kinda not because now I've been left with a dilemma.
I have a Galaxy S5 and lo & behold it fell off the arm of the chair into a bucket of water (sadly not just any water but containing thoroughly diluted Fairy washing up liquid) which I was using to clean the floor an hour earlier. (Bucket placement fail. Rest assured I now always remove the bucket to the bathroom straight after cleaning.) It was submerged for ~2 seconds, was turned on at the time and when removed it was in the process of shutting itself down. Stupidly, my first instinct was to turn it back on (I know it's actually irrelevant but I was pretty uneducated on water damage before this happened so I thought if it came back on it was a good sign.) It began booting up normally but my second instinct was arguably more intelligent and I turned it back off again.
I went off to dissassemble it & just as I was thinking about how lucky it was that the S5 was water resistant I suddenly noticed a gap where the battery cover had come away (probably from the impact of hitting the bottom of the bucket - it fell bottom first and it was very shallow - still deeper than a phone.) That sucked. On removing it it was painfully obvious that water had got into it - everywhere - the water indicator behind the battery is so red it's half fallen off. So at this point I just consigned myself to claiming on my insurance (it is covered for this situation thankfully but there's an excess) and left it in pieces for a few minutes. I really stupidly turned it on again - just to check (please don't tell me off, I totally admit at this point I hadn't read on google this was a bad thing to do) - and the display did not work at this point, it constantly vibrated until I removed the battery again but I was erroneously relieved that it had powered on.
Remembering I had an emergency wet electronics pack - a rich name for a plastic bag with 2 big packets of silica gel in it - I thought I might as well try it (although I really did think there was no hope at this point.) I left it - and the battery - in the packet overnight and tried again in the morning - still no display (vibrating had stopped =)) I returned it to the emergency packet where I pretty much forgot about it for 3-4 days booting up my old S3 mini to use in the meantime. (Pay as you go so I still couldn't ring the 25p a minute insurance line.)
I was just about to pop to a relatives to use the house phone to make my claim when I thought I'd give it the S5 one last shot, not expecting anything, I pressed the power button & realised it wouldn't power on at all, so I wiped it with alcohol (having finally googled my problem... the cleaning kind, not the drinking kind), dried that off, plugged it in and lo & behold - again - it appears to work perfectly. This, ironically, is the crux of the problem.
I've read the insurance T& Cs over and over and whilst it covers water damage it says, in a totally unrelated section, that it doesn't cover damage that does not prevent the normal functioning of the device.
So I started googling some more. I read that water damaged devices may have some problems (namedly with the screen, audio or signal) yet I have none of these. I am ridiculously paranoid that every bit of lag is water damage but then again I have a lot of apps installed *naughty* so it's probably not... and tbh it does perform pretty well (my nonwater damaged laptop is lagging as I type & the S3 mini performs worse.) I also read that water-damaged devices frequently appear to work then give up the ghost within a few days of drowning - this also didn't happen. Aside from the indicator being red (and possibly soap residue inside knowing my luck) it's working. So, because of the fairly large excess I haven't reported it yet (there is no time limit on when you report the damage on my cover, I assume this is because most people want their phone replaced sooner rather than later.).
Soooo... phone is still working what I think is fine. Battery life sucks but tbf I think that's the case with all the droids I've had, if it did actually become a problem it's likely fixably by replacing the battery anyway. What I want to know is do I ring the insurance people anyway? There's no T & Cs regarding time of accident or when it breaks la de da but the clause that's worrying me is that the phone has to not be functioning normally. I don't want them saying "you can't have a new phone because it still works" and then snidily cancelling my insurance the next day because they know there is a heightenend future risk of breakdown. Or is water damage so bad that they will replace it anyway regardless of whether it's showing any signs of damage yet? I just want to know what the typical approach to that is.
I'd also like to know, based on the high-level of detail I've provided on what occured post-plunge - what are the odds & likely timescales of future breakdown? Is most the damage likely to have been done by now or is it still likely to turn into a brick at any second? If problems emerge are they likely to appear gradually or suddenly? It has been 4 weeks since the incident. I think I can safely rely on it day to day at this point but do you think it could last another 4 weeks? 4 months?
I guess I could dunk it again just to be sure it breaks :angel: but that seems like such a waste, both of the phone & the excess money... and not to mention stupid if there were any problems with the claims process or the new phone...
Thank you very much, Im really not much of an expert on what water does to phones. Especially not fairy liquid.
Many thanks
AngelzEye
TL;DR = Dunked S5 in water, waterproof cover failed on impact, did turn it back on whilst wet *idiot*, left it in emergency wet electronics pack for 3-4 days, works perfectly, insured for water damage but there's a clause that says damage that doesn't affect the normal functioning isn't covered - I'm guessing their talking about minor cracks here but does it apply to me? . What the hell do I do?? Should I break it properly and claim because the future risk of problems is so great, do I just wait it out and claim only if problems happen, will I get a replacement if i ring the insurance or will they refuse to replace it cos it still works and threaten my future cover.