This made us lol
|
It's also a noun! Are you in the UK or Europe? Check these guys out, www.technologyrepair.co.uk/ if you're in need of high-quality board-level mobile device, laptop, or game console repairs. You can also follow them on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/Technology.Repair.UK  In the last 2 weeks alone, I've had no less than 4 people inform me that Verizon is offering wet phone "drying" in under an hour. Truth be told, I'm not familiar with their process, or how available it is. I can't imagine every Verizon store location, corporate or otherwise actually having a machine to dry wet cell phones...yet. If they do, kudos to whoever made that sale! There are a few machines on the market that claim to "dry", and subsequently, "save" your wet cell phone and all of those contacts, photos, videos, selfies, diary, notes, memos, apps, music, and who knows what else that you forgot to back-up before your phone met Mr Toilet or Mrs Lake. One of the most notable is TekDry's heated vacuum chamber. This post isn't to specifically pick on TekDry, or their innovative invention. This post is to pick on ALL "phone drying" gimmicky machines. Any device "drying" machine is gimmicky and relies on dumb luck to "fix" a wet phone. The science (a heated vacuum chamber) is sound, but the logic is flawed. Water "damage" is a 3 part problem.
Hello sir thank you for taking the time to read my email and give instruction. To be honest I am looking for the basics and some advice. Maybe some specials tools if you use them or techniques you have. From a video I seen you just pour water in the ultrasonic cleaner and put the board in, but I have also heard put alcohol in the water also. So just anything you can offer is helpful. Thank you.
Howdy Joseph, and thanks for taking the time to read our blog and/or watch our videos. The subject of water damage restoration can indeed become complicated and confusing. I mean after all, we’re using water to “fix” water damage. What’s more confusing than that?
One of my customers donated an iPhone 4 to me for parts. It was disabled and the owner couldn't remember the password, or the Apple ID. Since it was a 4, they already had a 5S replacement, and I had repaired several of their devices in the past, they gave this one to me for parts. After striping everything from the phone and filing the small parts away, I decided to use the logic board in an experiment.
People continue to tell me that their wet phone is currently in rice, but is still dead. So, I decided to rig this now "naked" (no frame and the protective shields removed from the logic board) phone to function by connecting a screen to the board, along with a battery (charged to 75% - I got impatient waiting for 100%), and the charge port (dock) connected (so I could plug in a cord to turn it on once I was ready to dunk the contraption in water). Below are the two videos I made while the naked phone was under water. One is the first 2 minutes of the experiment, describing what's about to happen, the other is a time-lapse filmed on another iPhone - compressing 30 minutes into 30 seconds and showing how the logic board gets covered in corrosion under water.
The one question people ask me the most is, "how do you restore a wet phone?". I finally decided to sit down and type up the 11 steps I follow. For me, water damage restoration has constantly been changing (for the better). Indeed, one cannot improve if they resist change. JMO, but there's always room for improvement. Over the last year, my start to finish process has evolved - a lot. Here's where I'm currently at...
While this blog is dedicated to mobile electronics repair, especially water damage, I feel like I haven't done a whole lot in regard to actually teaching much (with the exception of yackin' about ultrasonic cleaning), so tonight, I'll throw out a trouble-shooting morsel (just one... for now... it's 3:30am, and I've got to sleep too you know). This 5S came in from another repair shop. It was water damaged and the other repair shop did a great job cleaning it up - yet the phone was still dead. I de-soldered the board shields (a must IMO if you want to be serious about restoring wet phones) and discovered evidence of corrosion that survived the first cleaning. The board was run through 4 cycles of 4 minutes each in my ultrasonic cleaner - changing the board position each time, then rinsed and dried. The board was placed in a frame (not it's original frame) that I've got set up with known, working parts (dock, buttons, battery). The phone powered on, but there was a problem. The backlight wasn't working! I could see the Apple logo, but only under a bright light. Powering it down, I pulled the board and placed it under a microscope to re-check the backlight circuit. Below is a photo of part of that circuit taken through the microscope. The green arrow is pointing at one of the backlight filters. Using a multimeter set to beep when a closed circuit is detected, I probed the leads from the LCD connector to the backlight filters and didn't get a beep on one of them. The circuit is shown by the red line - the LCD connector pin to the left side of that filter (FL24) should beep (closed circuit), but it didn't, meaning the circuit was open. Probing the other side of the filter, it beeps, thus the filter can now be assumed to be the problem. The filter was replaced and the circuit re-probed. It beeped on both ends of the filter, so the circuit is no longer open.   After reassembling the phone, a bright white light emanated from the LCD with a black Apple logo! The backlight was back! The board shields were tacked back on, the phone reassembled, and re-tested. The phone fired right up again. That's always a good feeling. :)
|
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. Archives
August 2016
Categories |
RSS Feed