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What are mAh's and why should I care?

1/26/2015

Without trying to get too technical, in simple terms, mAh is commonly used to describe the total amount of energy a battery can store at one time. A battery rated for more mAh will power a phone for a longer amount of time, given the same usage pattern. mAh, and sometimes written as mAH stands for milliampere hours. Basically, the more mAh, the more battery power you have. If you have an external battery you use to recharge your phone when you're away from a wall outlet, somewhere on it is its mAh capacity. The ones that can recharge an iPad or your phone several times often have a capacity greater than 10,000 mAh.

So why this post?

Because Reddit and other sources, us included have been advising 5C owners to replace their battery with a 5S battery if they feel like their original battery is no longer performing up to standard and the phone is out of warranty. Click the link below for info on iPhone battery swapping on Reddit.

Link to Reddit article about battery swapping

Apple's iPhone 5S battery is rated at 1560 mAh while the 5C is rated at 1510. The iPhone 5 is rated at 1440, but it doesn't matter because it has a different connector to the logic board than the 5C/5S. The 5C/5S share the same connector, and the battery is physically the same size. So why put a 5S battery in your 5C? Well, for 3.3% more battery life of course! Hey, it's not much, but it's still more.

Why is this now a problem? We found out today that with iOS 8.1.2, Apple has made it so that you cannot interchange the batteries on these two phones. If you have a 5S battery in your 5C (or even the other way around for some reason), you may notice your phone "boot-loops" for an unknown reason. If so, and you know you had a battery swap - swap back and retry.

How do I know if I have the right battery?

Underneath the text, "Li-ion Polymer Battery" is an APN number. Below are the APN's for the two devices in question. If your 5C has a battery with a 5S APN#, you may experience problems on iOS 8.1.2

5S Battery APN# 616-0721, 616-0728, 616-0719, 616-0718, 616-0722, 616-0728, 616-0720

5C Battery APN# 616-0669, 616-0667, 661-8300

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Phone goes in swimming pool and a tiny spider moved in...

1/26/2015

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At least that's what the corrosion on the logic board looks like - as though a tiny spider weaved tiny webs EVERYWHERE. Yep, the owner fessed up to tossing it into a bowl of rice before giving it to us. The phone had no signs of life and was dry as a bone when opened up. After a few rounds through an ultrasonic cleaner and scrubbing of all those tiny spider webs, the parts were dried out thoroughly, and the phone re-assembled with a new battery. Bam!!! It powered right up! Functions 100% Owner could. not. be. happier.

Rice could not stop corrosion like this from occurring, and this happens to nearly every electronic device that suffers water intrusion. Just another example of why rice is a bad idea.

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I stuck my phone completely under water on purpose!

1/25/2015

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See that rainbow trout right there? I snapped that photo on the morning of May 31st, 2014 while running down a canyon in Utah, training for a marathon. At a point where a waterfall meets a river, there is a calm pool of water with trout ranging from a few inches to over a foot in length.

As I stopped and stared momentarily, while catching my breath, I realized something. There are fish swimming an arm's length away from me and I have a waterproof phone. Rather, a waterproof case on my phone - an iPhone 5S at the time.

I stuck the phone in the water and realized I wasn't able to press the shutter button once the screen was under water (touch screens lose their ability to know where you're touching under water). Pressing the volume button on the phone produced nothing but blurry photos.

DING DING DING! Light bulb A turns on in Brain B! My earbuds are connected to the waterproof extension coming out of the earphone jack of the phone, so I can dip the phone fully under water and press the volume button on the earbuds as a "remote" shutter release. Voila! It works, and now you're looking at a nice sized rainbow trout swimming in a river in Utah, taken by an iPhone, completely under water. :) ...you're welcome.

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Saw this on Twitter.

1/24/2015

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Just one more reason why rice is a bad idea. Even if your phone does turn on, tiny rice grains, pieces of rice grains, and other debris may end up inside various areas of your phone. I've opened up phones and found them full of dirt before. It wouldn't surprise me if someone's phone ends up full of debris from being in rice. Below is a pic of just one of the phone's I've opened up and found dirt everywhere. Follow our Twitter feed at https://twitter.com/RiceIsForDinner

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I make people cry, and I enjoy it...

1/23/2015

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Have a small child that threw your phone in the toilet? I know someone who does. They thought their photos were lost forever. To them, at the time, they were. This person had heard about what I was able to do for other people with water damage and contacted me for help. At the same time, another similar phone was taking an unexpected swim in the lake. Both of these devices ended up on my desk at the same time.

Below are photos of the two phones and some of the obvious problems. On the left is the lake phone and a fair amount of corrosion around the LCD and digitizer connections (circled in green). On the right is the toilet phone with a tripped water sensor and RUST!

Both phones were stripped to their bare components and thoroughly cleaned in an ultrasonic cleaner and other methods, scrubbed, and thoroughly dried, then re-assembled with new batteries (always replace the battery of your water-damaged phone). Both devices came back to life and functioned 100% after re-assembly. Amusingly, the lake phone had the water droplets background! :)

Both owners were shocked when I handed their fully functioning devices back to them. Apparently, the wife of one of them cried after finding out none of her data was lost. :)

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Rice couldn't save dad $200, but I could...

1/23/2015

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Recently, I made a child somewhere very happy when their dad handed them back a fully functioning Nintendo DS. This DS had been the unfortunate victim of wrong place, wrong time as a blender-gone-wild exploded and spewed its contents all over the countertop, and the DS. Shortly thereafter, it died. An attempt at pulling the moisture out with a bag of rice failed miserable. The father of this child had heard from friends about my previous work on wet devices and high success rate of bringing "dead" electronics back to life, so he contacted me about saving his DS.

I was handed a bag of parts (the DS had been partially disassembled in an attempt at drying it out) and told that rice wasn't able to save it. He had tried rice because everyone knows someone who thinks their electronics were saved by rice. Truth is, the rice did little to nothing at all and if someone's device came back on, they got lucky.

Here is the before and after photos of that DS.

Once fully disassembled, it was obvious why the display wouldn't turn on and why rice could do nothing to save it.
The photo below is of two areas of the logic board where corrosion visible to the naked eye was blatantly apparent (circled in red for those who aren't sure what they're looking at). When water enters electronic devices, it brings dirt and dissolved minerals with it. Between the new outsiders and the gold, copper, and other metals inside the phone, you end up with a good environment for corrosion. Rice cannot stop corrosion once it starts and it cannot remove it.

Once corrosion starts, it will continue. If your phone isn't "dead", it will become "glitchy" as various functions begin to malfunction. Should you attempt to dry out your device with these new "dry bags" that you can find on various websites? Walmart even sells a dry bag for putting a wet device in, in hopes of a full recovery. Answer: NO.

Again, anything short of a proper cleaning will not remove the dirt and dissolved minerals the water washed into your device. Attempting to dry it out will not remove corrosion and gunk and will only make the corrosion and gunk more difficult to remove later. My personal preference (and that of Mendon iPad Rehab) is that if your device gets wet, you do NOTHING. Do not attempt to turn it on. Do NOT attempt to charge it. Do not attempt to dry it out. Your best hope at recovery is proper cleaning by a professional and I would rather receive the device sopping wet than bone dry and full of rust and corrosion.

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Your Freshly Cleaned Laundry in Trash Bags, Left in the Sun

1/22/2015

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"Putting your water damaged phone in a bag of rice is like stuffing a load of wet laundry into a trashbag and leaving it in the sun for a few days---we all know the middle of that bag is going to reek of wet moldy clothes in a few days."

That quote is from our good friend Jessa at Mendon iPad Rehab. You wouldn't do that to your clothes, so why would you do it to your phone? Jessa goes on to say, "We know this! We know that if you don't want your favorite shirt to reek, there is no substitute for ripping that bag open and spreading everything out to dry. But with our phones, we *want* to believe in the magic power of rice." In this case, silica gel, or any other true desiccant can be substituted for rice.

Want to know what happens inside your phone (analogous to wet laundry in trash bags) once water enters?

Why would you leave this in your phone? Rice (and no other true desiccant) has the ability to remove what the water has done to the device. The above image is corrosion on a logic board after water intrusion and an attempt to dry the device made. Once corrosion begins, it will continue to grow long after the water has dried up. You may believe that rice "magically" saved your phone, but the reality is that you got lucky that your phone came back on at all without a proper cleaning. Eventually, the corrosion growing inside may impair your phone's function or abilities. You may notice a glitchiness that didn't exist before and you may notice your phone reboots itself at random moments. These my friends, are some of the nasty "side effects" of a water damaged device.

For fun, here is another photo from Mendon iPad Rehab,

Notice the rust on the battery screw, the tripped water sensor, the stain on the loud speaker, the corrosion near the vibration motor, FFC, and EMI shield, as well as the white flakes of... rice???

Later, more from Jessa and why silica packets aren't any better than rice...

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False hopes

1/21/2015

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Previously we briefly mentioned the theory of rice as a desiccant to dry out wet electronics. While it is true that rice can absorb many times its weight in water, alas, it cannot do this by sitting in a bowl on the counter, lest we come home from work every day to a perfectly prepared bowl of rice. I don't know about the rest of you, but the basmati in my cupboard is still as hard and dry as it was when I put it there 3 months ago and there's no sign of it magically fluffing up to perfection on its own anytime soon.

So, why then do people with wet phones think that dry rice will somehow save their device? Even rice in humid climates stays hard and dry after months of exposure to high humidity.

So what exactly is a desiccant and why do people feel like rice is one?

Okay? so what does it mean to be hygroscopic?

More on Hygroscopy from Princeton University

The folks at CNET Magazine had this to say about rice as a viable desiccant for wet electronics,

"...technically dried grains such as rice will absorb liquids, so people have used this as an available desiccant to dry out a device. However, rice is relatively ineffective at absorbing liquid from the air and may not be as much help as people think."

Link to CNET article

So, does this mean you should use silica gel packets, or a desiccant with a higher affinity for atmospheric moisture, like salt or sugar? :)

More on that tomorrow.

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Purpose

1/20/2015

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There is a real travesty, and subsequent tragedy that continues to spread at lightning speed thanks to the miracle and curse that is, Google, or more broadly, the Internet. The subject of this post is RICE, and I don't mean the acronym for care of a sprained ankle (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation). No, I'm referring to rice, the grain...the FOOD.

Drop your phone in water and then ask your family, friends, and co-workers what you should do. Odds are, you're going to hear, "Put it in rice", or comments like, "I know someone who put their wet phone in rice for 3 days and it worked fine afterword".

Why is that?

Isn't that what you do when you're not sure what to do? I use Google frequently for information. Google and other search engines offer us endless amounts of information.

I asked Google what to do with my wet phone, and this is a sample of what the all knowing (not really) Google sent back to me...

Rice is for dinner, not your toolbox, so why do thousands, if not millions of people put their wet phones and other electronics in perfectly good rice, hoping for a miracle? Because somewhere, sometime, someone brought the idea up on the basis of rice being a desiccant, or they tried it and got lucky.

So what's a desiccant? Well, according to Google :) ..."a desiccant is a hygroscopic substance that induces or sustains a state of dryness (desiccation) in its vicinity. Commonly encountered pre-packaged desiccants are solids that adsorb water."

So there you have it, the reason why people put wet things they hope to save in rice.

Next up, why rice will not save your phone... Stay tuned.

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You're probably wondering why I have this bag of rice on my table...

1/19/2015

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Please, eat the rice and let a professional work on your wet phone! There are literally thousands of videos, blog posts, and websites with articles about how "rice saved my phone". There is nothing magical about rice and if you know someone that claims rice saved their wet phone, they got lucky. Nothing more, nothing less.

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Purpose

#1 Blogging to inform the masses of the silliness that is: "put your wet phone in rice". Rice cannot save your phone; follow the blog to find out why. If you feel like rice saved your phone, you got lucky. Nothing more. Nothing less.

#2 To offer high quality repair services, phone, and of course, rice accessories at a great price. Be sure to visit the store. New products and services are continually being added, so check back often.

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