Putting A Water Damaged Phone In Distilled Water

[bednobs]

the man at the phone shop told me today, that it's not water that kills phones, it's the crap in the water, and the way to fix water damaged phones is to put them in distilled water. is this true?

[woofgang]

doubt it. I bet he gets loads of jolly laffs out of that one.

[nungate]

put it in a box filled with rice

[sherrardk]

I thought you were supposed to put them in a bowl of rice.

[bednobs]

i don't actually have a water damamged phone, we were just talking

[sherrardk]

Oh no, you didn't get stuck with a techie bore did you?

[bednobs]

nah, he was noce, even if he was about 7

[EDDIE51]

Yes it is true, completely pure water can be dried off with no traces left so the phone should be salvageable. All natural and tap water has various chemicals dissolved in it even the 'purest' natural water has 'salts' of Calcium and Magnesium and other elements in it. It is these that contaminate the electronics in the phone and cause short circuits that mean it can not work. Totally pure distilled water has no salts so can not cause short circuits once the phone is fully dry it should start to work again.

[EDDIE51]

Problem would be that in almost all cases the normal water would have already caused damage by short circuiting the battery etc. If a phone was dropped into distilled water rather than normal water it should be ok after drying.

[Gromit]

Technically it is.

When they recover the blackbox recordings from the sea bed of crashed planes, they keep them in seawater, and gradually pump the salty water out and bring in clean distilled water.
Then when they dry them, there are no depositsleft in the electronics.

If your phone has already dried, I don't think the process will be any help.

[EDDIE51]

Gromit 'black box's' are specifically designed to withstand high speed impact, intense fire and prolonged immersion in seawater without damage, to compare them to a mobile phone which is basically disposable is a bit silly.

[EDDIE51]

methyl, the damage would have occurred well before you had the chance to get the battery out, it would only take milliseconds.

[joko]

what kills the phone is when the person attempts to turn it on immediately after it happens - or when its still wet inside.

that is usually the first thing people do

as soon as you switch it on the inside shorts etc and wrecks it

if you open it up fast and leave it in a warm place for about a week it is very possible that it will be fine

i have done this 3 times and the phone was fine
the one time i turned it on - i killed it