What Has Your Phone Survived? 422
NotAnIndividual writes "On an ice fishing trip two months ago, I lost my iPhone somewhere in the snow. I searched and searched, but to no avail. But just this weekend when moving the ice hut, lo and behold there it was. I quickly threw it into a bag of rice and placed it under a lamp to defrost. Three hours later I plugged it in. I wasn't expecting much. I mean, really, it had been frozen in snow for the last two months! To my surprise, the Apple logo popped up. I put in the SIM card and voila, my iPhone was back. My apps, my contacts, my music and more importantly my life were back. And this is the same iPhone that I dropped in a cup of coffee a few months ago! This got me wondering how much damage a cell phone can actually take. How have other Slashdot users punished their phones without actually killing them completely?"
Slow (Score:5, Insightful)
news day?
Re:Slow (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, my phone has survived many a slow news day.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I don't know if I'm going to be safe next time I leave my gf talking to herself, but the iPhone has remained unpunished.
Re:Slow (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Today has been the day of "But we couldn't think of anything else for today's obligitary Iphone Slashvertisement".
We've already had the classic of judging the success of a product in a completely different market, by comparing it to how few Iphones have been sold [slashdot.org]. So here we have Saturday's obligitary Iphone story. Before you know it, there'll be stories about how you can now finally visit a website On Your Iphone, like it's 2001 again. Oh wait, we we already did that one too [slashdot.org]. Before you know it, there'll be stories about how you can use your Iphone to talk to a complete stranger, as if they were in the same room as you, just like on Star Trek...
(Seriously, as soon as I read the headline of "What Has Your Phone Survived", I immediately guess that there'd be obligatory advertising for Apple, despite being a niche player in this market. You know what my Nokia 5800's survived? Not being the subject of a major spam campaign by the media, that's what.)
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He doesn't deserve to post stories here. A true geek would have backups of everything. My E65 syncs all the contacts, notes and schedules to an online server every night.
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What I also need is to be able to extract a text file containing my contacts from thos backups.
And then I don't understand why there isn't an easy way to just import and export all of my contacts to a CSV file whenever I want. I use Sony Ericsson phones, Nokias and HTC, I am constantly needing to sync my contacts, but I have never found a quick and e
Re:Slow (Score:4, Funny)
a "geek" has what kind of server in his basement?
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.Mac: pay a lot for things you pay your provider for too. But hey, it's Apple, so it's better, no?
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As he felt the need to mention the phone's brand name four fucking times in that short advertisement^W "story", he clearly cares more about that than about those other things which were only mentioned once.
A full season in the snow (Score:5, Interesting)
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Mine got run over by a car once, while it was lying in an inch of snow in the street.
The velcro on my belt clip let go, and I didn't hear it hit the ground, because of the snow.
Realized it was missing a little later, and when I got home, there was a tire track right over it.
The front display was cracked - it was a flip phone - but the internal one was fine, and the phone still worked for the next several months or so until I changed carriers. I still use it on occasion for a camera or flashlight, but not a
Re:A full season in the snow (Score:5, Insightful)
My iPhone didn't live through it, but when I got hit by a little old lady who ran a red light, my iPhone took a direct hit. I was thrown 20 feet and broke a half dozen ribs. I had a bruise up my left side from my knee to my shoulder -- with a non-bruised rectangle where the phone was. It was at ground zero of the impact, and may have absorbed enough impact to keep my thigh from breaking. iArmour.
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They didn't replace the screen. They just gave you a replacement.
Check out iFixit to determine how to replace the screen - it's very difficult and prone to breaking something. Instead, it's just like the iPod - they give the customer a refurb unit, then send the bad one
Re:A full season in the snow (Score:5, Informative)
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Sorry, you're both wrong. It's the same iPhone and it was just the glass they replaced.
If you had mentioned HOW you know it's the same phone, your post would have some actual content, and someone might rate it Informat...
Oh, never mind.
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Re:A full season in the snow (Score:5, Funny)
I had an old just-a-phone get ran over by a loaded 18-wheeler
While deep-sea fishing 3 years ago, I accidentally dropped my iPhone over the subduction zone of the Mariana Trench.
Last month I got an email from a guy in New Zealand who found it while skiing on Mount Ruapehu after a volcanic eruption.
Praised be Apple.
Re:A full season in the snow (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:A full season in the snow (Score:4, Funny)
Worst. Pickup line. Ever.
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Damn those white iPhones. Once at the summit of Mount Stirling in Victoria, Australia I saw these guys madly digging in the snow. One of them had pushed his ski pole into the snow and it came up without the plastic basket. New baskets are cheap but skiing to the shop without one would be a PITA.
The basket they lost was white. Now when I replace mine I don't buy white ones.
Re:A full season in the snow (Score:5, Interesting)
Learned that one the hard way. I spent 2 hours searching for a ski that popped off in powder. A SKI! It was lost in about 40 square feet. Took 2 hours to find. Learned my lesson and after that always rolled a neon streamer up my snow pants. In the event of losing a ski you get a bright trail to where it went. Might be able to do that to a cell phone. :D
A run through the wash cycle (Score:5, Interesting)
I left my blackberry in my pants once when I put them in the washer. The phone was on during the entire cycle. I feared the worst, but put them on the heater for a day, turned it on, and.... it worked. Ok, so for the next two weeks or so buttons would randomly press themselves, and login was occasionally tedious, but it worked - and still does. I'm still pretty amazed that it didn't completely short it out.
Oh, and to you nitwit support people who gaze at that stupid little humidity strip and tell me that it is my fault the phone is crashing all the time.... go hump a lamp post. That strip turns pink when it's just somewhat humid outside. Since submerging a phone in water for about 20 minutes doesn't kill it, I'd like you to support your piece of crap hardware like you promised you would.
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Mine is a (work) Windows Mobile. I looked at it and it froze up. It doesn't survive much use at all (worst user interface EVER!)
I don't have an iPhone, (Score:3, Funny)
but if I did, I'd probably leave it in the stove, and the next day is wouldn't be burnt at all and would work perfectly.
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drove over it (Score:2, Interesting)
Similar to your story I was out shoveling snow one day last winter... and after I was done my iPhone was missing.
I tracked it down in the tracks of my truck -- I'd moved it to finish shoveling and driven over my phone. As in your case all was fine -- didn't break the screen and it's been working just fine for at least a year since then.
your life? (Score:5, Funny)
My apps, my contacts, my music and more importantly my life were back.
You should really see a dotor about your addiction. I mean, seriously, that's just a phone!
Jesus Phone (Score:3, Funny)
No, it's so much MORE than just a life. It's life, it's the meaning of life, and it's the afterlife.
Re: (Score:2)
No - for that you can just dial #42 from any cell phone.
My iPhone Came Back From tHe Dead (Score:4, Funny)
What has my iPhone phone survived?
After spending hours trying to work out how to get my iPhone to run more than on aPplication at once, I thought sod it, and proceeded to nail my iPhone to a wooden cross.
Three days later, I picked it up again. I wasn't expecting much. I mean, really, I'd shoved a nail right through the almighty touchscreen! To my surprise, the aPple logo popped up. My apps, my contacts, my music and more importantly my life were back.
Life wouldn't be worth living if I hadn't discovered the iPhone.
Re:Jesus Phone (Score:5, Funny)
Satan phone is more like a windows mobile phone. You're pretty much free to do whatever you want but you're eventually going to be punished for it.
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Woah, you've never heard of Confession? That where you have to go if you do anything they don't like. It's a kind of self-service court system, where you're your own prosecutor and the company's local sales and support manager is the sentencing judge. In the last couple of centuries the lock-in has been relaxed quite a bit in most countries, but before that you were likely to be killed.
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That's the last person he should see - his problem is too much doting!
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And his life was gone for **two months**.
Sad.
I mean, I lost my cheap-ass work cell phone last week, and it's only a PITA because I have to look up everyone's number again until they are all in my contacts.
My phone has fallen and can't get up. (Score:2)
"This got me wondering how much damage a cell phone can actually take. "
Stopping a bullet.
"How have other Slashdot users punished their phones without actually killing them completely?"
Does browsing Slashdot count?
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Does browsing Slashdot count?
Maybe hosting a popular story that's linked to on slashdot would be a more appropriate test.....
Sony ericsson (Score:5, Interesting)
wtf? (Score:5, Informative)
There's practically no difference between being frozen for one day, or arbitrarily long. There are only two dangers: contraction of metal and joints while freezing; and condensation/expansion while thawing. I'm sure the rice helped with the condensation, although putting it under a lamp couldn't have helped; better to warm it as slowly as possible.
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Yup. Most of the damage from freezing and thawing electronic component comes from any water in the device. Other than that, the LCD may take some damage.
Silicon is not water based and is already frozen in a solid state. The chip components can go to -20 to -40 Celsius before damage occurs.
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If you're very worried about small bits of ice and snow inside it, just pop it in your freezer for a while. The water will slowly sublimate. Simplest way of testing this, is to make a really good snowball and leave it in your freezer for a couple of days.
Simple (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Simple (Score:5, Informative)
TECHNICALLY you can drop a running circuit into *PURE* water and nothing happens. Water isn't very conductive.
I'm fairly certain that if you tried this, the water would be rendered conductive by dissolving whatever contaminants you happen to have on the surface of the device and you'd still get a short. YMMV.
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Nah, it's very low conductivity even with regular contamination. Try testing your tap water...pretty pathetic. Not even remotely close enough to directly kill something. The death would be from a secondary effect, like a power converter going unstable from a huge change in circuit wide capacitance or, if you were real unlucky, something like a high impedance transistor gate being physically close enough to a voltage source to actually turn the thing on (or off), even with the high resistance.
Now, if you dro
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I'm fairly certain that if you tried this, the water would be rendered conductive by dissolving whatever contaminants you happen to have on the surface of the device and you'd still get a short. YMMV.
Actually that's very unlikely. Even in a fairly conductive liquid you don't necessarily get a short.
Many years ago I dropped my calculator into Copper refining electrolyte.
Electrolyte is
* ~180 g/L H2SO4
* 35 g/L Cu++
* plus lots of other stuff.
It's meant to be conductive.
It's also at 65 degrees Celcius (to aid conductivity).
I fished it out as quick as I could and pulled out the batteries. I asked the ex electronics foreman what to do. His advice as to pull it
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I'm pretty sure the skin flakes, hairs, dust and other miscellaneous gunk trapped in and on the device would make the water conductive after a short period, however.
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water is suicide - distilled, lab grade whatever...
As an EE I have done a little too much "suicide testing" of devices.
cold freeze you should be able to survive, the battery might need replacement, but the chips will survive.
If you want to dunk a phone into a fluid and see it survive you need to use something like 3M's Fluorinert
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert [wikipedia.org]
Neat stuff - you can take a computer (No disk drive) and put it in fluid and it still keeps on running while totally immersed in the fluid.
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Big deal - people were running their computers in aquariums filled with olive oil years ago. Adds whole new meaning to "do you want fries with that?"
a Fall (Score:2)
I dropped a BlackBerry 8800 off the roof of a seven story building and it worked fine with a crack in the case.
Broken screen (Score:2)
I broke the screen on my iPhone over a year ago. It looks hideous, with spider-web cracks all up and down it now.
It still works. Hasn't failed at all. I have the required repair kit to fix it, just been too lazy to do so ($79 to buy the kit myself, by the way -- Apple wanted $200, and most online fixers are about $100). At this point, it's almost a badge of pride, because no one who sees the phone believes it still works.
However, I can certify that putting an LG NV3 through the washing machine and dryer
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My Nokia didn't survive the wash cycle either. The SIM card still works fine!
Are there any phone manufacturers that will certify their products as 'washing machine safe'? :)
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Are there any phone manufacturers that will certify their products as 'washing machine safe'? :)
Be sure to set the washer on delicate, and dry on low heat
Coffee and snow? (Score:2)
You really have a love-hate relationship with your iPhone!
Is it the love of the shiny status symbol combined with the hate of your AT&T "service", or vice-versa?
Roller Coaster (Score:2)
My old Nokia fell out of my pocket whilst riding the roller coaster (Medusa) at Six Flags. It fell about 30 feet onto the sidewalk and the only issue with it was that the casing kinda split a little and the bottom 4 rows of pixels on the screen stopped functioning. I stuck some tape on the thing and it kept chugging along for about another 6 months before finally failing.
Dropped an iPhone 1.0 down a 4 story stairwell (Score:2)
Dropped an iPhone 1.0 down a 4 story stairwell
It now has a small case scratch near the ring/vibrate switch. Still going strong after 3 years on the same battery, too...
-- Terry
weird mirror universe (Score:5, Funny)
slashdot is mirroring the crazy awesome friday night conversation i'm having at the bar with all my male friends *right now*! and there's no girls here either!
My god (Score:5, Funny)
It's amazing (Score:2)
It's amazing how many people on the subway I've seen with cracked screens on their phones. Apparently, their phone still works after whatever violent past it had!
Pissed off (Score:4, Funny)
Realized the iphone didn't have a drive I could mount, Safari didn't have flash, no voice recognition... a battery that can't get through The Dark Knight...
Laid it down on the basement floor and pissed on it.
Still running. Didn't help at all.
Mike
dropped it in water (Score:4, Interesting)
Speaking of fish (Score:2)
Personally, I had a Motorola phone that didn't survive being dunked in a toilet bowl. And a Samsung one that seemed to cave into the extreme heat of a radiator.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Callin' bullshit on that article.
how much damage can an iPhone take (Score:2)
The iPhone has a glass screen that is very prone to cracking. I imagine it's a case of form over function, since glass looks nicer than plastic. It's not so pretty if ever the phone falls on a hard surface flat on the screen. This means an iPhone won't survive the ninja powers of a 2-year old who managed to grab your phone when you least expected it, to use as a hand grenade...
Also, for some stupid reason the screen was designed in such a way that changing it means also replacing the digitizer (the touch pa
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really? let me check my iphone which i have dropped onto reinforced concrete no less than 5 times. Nope not a scratch. twice from heights of 12 feet. A particular ladder at work can be awkward. The phone has dropped out of my pocket a couple of time there.
no scratches in the glass, no cracks, just a small nick in the corner of the black back.
Also all touch panels are either glued to the top of the glass, or to the bottom of the glass. that keeps them in place. Only low quality ones aren't attached.
Took mine scuba diving (Score:3, Interesting)
I once took my cell phone scuba diving. It was a couple of years ago at White Star Quarry in Ohio. I was having trouble donning my rented wet suit and forgot my cell was in my swim trunks pocket. I did not even notice it until we were on our safety stop, which is where you stop on your way back to the surface for a few minutes ease decompressing. So that was 40-some minutes submerged in water up to 50 feet deep.
Miraculously after drying out the phone worked just fine.
Returned Device Horror Stories (Score:2, Interesting)
My stories don't involve cell phones but it's devices of about equivalent size. And are from a different era.
I used to work at a medical device manufacturer that made TENS units. I worked in the Reliability Lab and my bench was across the room from the guy who serviced all the field return units.
He would occasionally get back devices that had fairly 'interesting' stories behind them. In that era, for the price we charged for the units, they came with a lifetime warranty. And the circuit boards were conf
Deep fryer (Score:2)
Went swimming...twice. (Score:2)
My phones like water.
First phone, went swimming three times: pool, lake, then creek. Survived fine. This wasn't "splash, oh no!". This was swimming around for a good 10 minutes and then "meh...it's a trooper.".
Second phone: swimming in lake, dropped into "freshly flushed" toilet. Works fine. Still can't hold this one close to my face...
For all the cases, took the battery out and let it dry in a sunny window for two weeks without trying to turn it on. Always powered right up. The water indicators always work
Your life? (Score:2)
"My apps, my contacts, my music and more importantly my life were back."
Where was your life during the last two months?! Associating having a life with having a gadget is pretty sad.
Try the outdoors, now with 100% surround sound and full-immersion 3D.
Original iPhone 2G (Score:5, Funny)
My iPhone 2G has survived almost three years of AT&T's spotty reception, their failure to offer a reasonably priced rate plan for people who don't talk much but need data service, their woeful customer service, and their lack of 3G coverage outside metropolitan areas. Other than that, it's been very enjoyable.
Re: (Score:2)
With quality like that, could you tell if it was broken?
Note to self... (Score:2)
Note to self: Never lend him electronics.
Nuclear Apocalypse (Score:2)
Zune (Score:3, Interesting)
none at all (Score:4, Interesting)
This got me wondering how much damage a cell phone can actually take.
One of my previous phones was working just fine one minute, and then the next minute it wasn't, and it never worked again. Based on the overwhelming weight of that single anecdote I would have to say that 'none it all' is how much damange a cell phone can actually take and still continue working.
(by a strange coincidence, 'none at all' is exactly how much of a scientific conclusion you can draw from this :)
Dropped mine in a pot of Chili -- (Score:2)
-- and unfortunately it didn't survive. I ended up donating the phone and accessories to a charity, because I heard that they can still make money from recycling it.
dunk in the lake (Score:2)
my friend and i were canoeing around toronto island in the summer of 2007 - which unfortunately got us turned-over from a big wave on the home stretch - there we were in the water, bailing out the canoe - cell phone in the back pocket... dried it out for a week.. got a black screen.. dried it out for two weeks.. it worked!! and for another two years after that. :-D
Palm Centro (Score:2)
News Flash: Palm stock is down nearly 40% in the last 5 days. Gosh, I wonder wh
Wrong pocket (Score:2)
Put my phone in the wrong pocket once. I always put it in my left hip pocket, so I got a fright when I reached for it and it wasn't there. Eventually found it in my right hip pocket. Fortunately it still worked.
Bzzzzz (Score:2)
I put mine on vibrate mode, inserted it into a hooker's vagine and had all of my friends call my number.
It wasn't easy retrieving it, but it still works. I just have these funny bumps around my ears and cheek now.
longevity (Score:2)
7 years of constant, daily use and abuse. Still runs awesome.
Image: http://208.69.42.194/scpfiles/6310i.jpg [208.69.42.194]
I've been actively looking at replacement phones for over 2 years now and
cannot find a phone with the quality and battery life that come even close.
Run over by cars (Score:2)
Once at a tram stop in Melbourne I noticed the guts of a phone beside the road. It looked like it had been run over enough times to push it sideways into the tram stop. I scouted around for a bit and found the battery and cover.
It powered up okay so I searched the sent and received calls to try to identify the owner. Everybody puts "Home" in their phone book but this started with +60 which made sense because this was near the university. I wasn't going to call this students parents in Malaysia and tell them
Washing Machine & Dryer (Score:4, Interesting)
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How do you drop an iPhone into a cup of coffee? The thing is barely small enough to fit into a duffel bag, let alone a cup of warm beverage.
Hard core coffee drinkers have huge mugs and for some reason they don't like to wash them either.
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Re:Really.. a cup of coffee (Score:5, Insightful)
Hard core coffee drinkers have huge mugs and for some reason they don't like to wash them either.
Wash the mug!?! Are you crazy! Do you have any idea how long it takes to get the perfectly balanced biological film deposited to bring out the full rich coffee experience? Not to mention the saved up oils of coffees past that gets in the pores of the mug!
Where do you come up with this mug washing crazy talk?
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Re:Rice does nothing! (Score:4, Informative)
Also, rice does indeed appear to be a desiccant, just not as strong a desiccant as purpose-made things like silica gel. It's fairly common to put a few grains of dry rice in a salt shaker to prevent the salt sticking together from moisture.
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In the case of the salt shaker, the rice isn't absorbing moisture (the salt is WAY better at it than the rice is), it's being used for the same function as the bearing in a spray paint can, to break up the clumps mechanically. You could actually use some metal ball bearings for the same purpose (make sure they're bigger than the holes in the shaker, obviously).
Popcorn kernels are a better candidate than ball bearings. I'm not saying ball bearings aren't a good choice but you'll find a lot of people have an aversion to finding them in something they're going to eat.
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All those little 'do not eat' packets that come sealed in packages with devices and items you buy contain a desiccant. And it's reusable. Usually the desiccant in them is crystal granules that are blue when dry, and go white when they've absorbed moisture. You can bake them at a low heat in an oven to re-dry them out for reuse. In fact, it's worth saving all the little 'do not eat' packets for that purpose. You can tear the packet open and keep the granules inside to combine in a larger container if yo
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It took you 30 minutes to walk down 4 flights of stairs?
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It took you 30 minutes to walk down 4 flights of stairs?
Maybe he's a quadriplegic (you insensitive clod!) and he had to drag himself down the stairs using only facial twitches.
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One time I dropped my cellphone - an old samsung clamshell - into a urinal while it was flushing.
My girlfriend called me at work one day, but I had to pee really bad, so I just one-handed things and hoped she'd have shut up by the time I was finished. No such luck. So finish, pull up my pants and take four or five steps back from the urinal, just to be safe. Phone is cradled between my ear and my shoulder while I try and get my damn zipper up. Go figure, the phone slips and falls... right onto the end of my
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I have had my phone (HTC Wizard -- T-Mobile MDA) outside in pouring rain for ~2 hours and it was still on and working when I retrieved it. It still works today, but I am not using it.
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