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10 Comments Samuel Fernández @samfdz

Cell phones are evolving and they tend to look, though not always, for greater durability to make life easier for their owners. As with dust and water protection, each one is more established but not yet standardized, and that has nothing else but to prevent it. small heart attacks that we suffer every time the phone drops into water or something spills on it.

In these cases of water accidents, there are so many tips to avoid in order to mitigate them once they do occur, but not all of them work. to make it work as quickly as possible. Well, trying methods that don't work might end up in a nice paperweight, and we're on our way to the store to buy a replacement.

Forget about the warranty

Because if there's one thing that happens almost automatically when a wet phone arrives at the technical service, it's that the free repair is rejected. The warranty doesn't cover water damage or phones that are supposed to be resistant to water. Once the elemental fluid passes through the seal. phone, loosen the wallet to repair it. Or buy a new cell phone, which we will try to move as far away from the water as possible.

Also, a water-damaged cell phone is hard to hide. There are times when there is a torch inside the cell phones, a mechanism that is usually a sticker and used to be a kind of handkerchief that changes color when in contact with water. It's that simple. If the sticker has changed color, you can say goodbye to free repair Automatic warranty cancellation.

No manufacturer will be responsible for the repair of the water, this is an exception specified in the warranties.

If this is the case, the technical service will send us a warranty void notification and possibly a repair quote, which we strongly disagree with. Or maybe it is. Either way, it's ideal to first try all the solutions we can to "bring your phone to life" or prevent his death. Well, we now know where the path to having him repaired leads.

Incidentally, in the event that all fails, there's nothing like taking out insurance that covers these mishaps. There are options for almost all tastes, but given the importance of a mobile phone in our time, a device that already is more than just a splicing device, there's nothing better than wearing it in a safe place, and we don't mean putting it in your sleeve.

Rice method

Regardless of some of the racist jokes that surround the rice method, it actually works as long as the internal flooding of the phone is not too strong or that we catch it in time, because if there are two enemies of the phone at the time of submersion, they are short circuits The first is resolved by turning the phone off immediately, the second by removing the water as quickly as possible and crossing your fingers.

Therefore, in these cases, it is important to distinguish between falling into ordinary water (tap, fountain, river) and falling into salt water. The latter is extremely harmful to the future of our cell phone as it causes corrosion almost immediately. , it destroys jewelry, removes discoloration from bass tunings and of course kills electronic devices. If the phone falls into salt water, we will have to submerge it in tap water to let the salt disappear. Then we can continue.

Rice may work, but cat litter is more effective. It's better silica than grains.

The rice absorbs the moisture, but it doesn't work wonders. To apply it properly, we need to take apart everything that is removable: the back covers, batteries, and anything else we can remove from the phone. If we can unscrew the inside of the phone, so much the better. Then and only then will we bury it. phone in the rice and let it run.It is a slow method, sometimes we will have to put it aside for up to two days, but it may work if the water doesn't penetrate too much.

This method works but it's not foolproof, it's important to clarify it. Maybe the phone will work again or not, in the first case it will be due to rice, in the second because of the flood that was unmanageable. These two days, we assemble all the parts of the phone in place, turn it on and cross our fingers. It serves rice, by the way, but better oatmeal, silica gel and even cat or beach sand.

Sparing alcohol

Another method that is quite effective is to conserve alcohol, which you usually have in your home medicine cabinet or you can buy it in an emergency at a local pharmacy. While it may seem absurd, submerging the phone can save it from diving, thanks to 70 °, 95 ° or isopropyl alcohol which we find with a purity of up to 99%.

Alcohol that evaporates without a trace from your phone also carries water with it

We definitely remember cleaning the electronic circuit with alcohol, or we saw someone do it. This is because alcohol of these degrees of purity evaporates without leaving any traces of its presence. But on the way it does something else, it drags the water it comes into contact with. So if you want to quickly remove water from electronic circuits, "pure" alcohol is probably your best friend.

At this point, we can soak the phone in alcohol and leave it there for a few minutes as the alcohol will reach the same points as water. Remember, always with the phone turned off and the battery removed, just like we did with alcohol or silica. Then we take the phone out of the alcohol. and wait for it to dry completely, until there is a trace of the smell on the mixture, at this point it will be completely removed without a trace.

For the sake of the telephone, forget about the heat

Many of the tips we read about how to keep your cell phone from falling into or spilling water on it relate to applying heat. Either way, it is recommended that you dry your phone with a hair dryer or even, no joke, give it a few minutes to dry. oven. Again, this is no joke.

In Engadget, I threw the phone into the water, what should I do?

Cell phones have electronic circuits on materials that seek to dissipate heat as much as possible. We even remember processor heatsinks, or the more commonly used thermal grease in personal computers. There is an explanation for this: electronics work better the colder the circuits. And it has a different explanation: metals and plastic parts melt when exposed to excessive heat.

Forget the heat: do not use dryers, do not put it next to stoves or, of course, do not put it in the oven

So if your phone gets a little, moderately or very wet, keep it away from heat sources and don't use them for drying. Many of its circuits do not respond happily when heated to them and it may happen that the phone is turned off by our own action to save it No heat No dryers, no ovens or other heat sources

Your phone might survive if ...

... it didn't short circuit when its internal electronics came in contact with water, if there is no internal corrosion.And if the above methods don't work, we can try one last trick to the extreme: put the phone in an airtight bag along with anti-moisture balls with which they are present in many clothes when we buy them. As we say, a last resort.

Maybe your phone is submersible, but don't submerge it

It is difficult but not impossible to save a cell phone from water, and it will always depend on how far the water has entered the terminal. As we have mentioned many times, the fact that a cell phone is "submersible" thanks to its certifications means nothing. These seals destroy water can flush out any electrical appliance.

Either way, it's better to be clear about which methods work and to what extent. None of them are infallible, but there are also some that are downright useless and even harmful. Be careful what we do with the phone when it has been damaged by water, in order not to make the situation worse than to solve it. A cell of water can be saved, yes, but with many buts.

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