[Help] Display problem on cell phone

When water gets into electronic devices it establishes new paths for current to flow. Pure water is an insulator but (practically speaking) there is no such thing as pure water. Your phone has new and unwanted paths for current to flow. Deionized water can be used to flush circuit boards, but this is hardly is a viable path for you. Your phone is contaminated and might become more disabled as time progresses. Or, it could dry out and heal!

snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com, Charles Schuler snipped-for-privacy@comcast.net 7/01/06 23:41:

I understand that, of course

It *is* now dry, after 3 weeks or so, I guess. Or is it not? water still left? Or do you imply that even after water is evaporated some mineral salts are left and create new circuits? in that case, things would be a (simple..!) matter of rinsing, right? The point is, the phone is functional, only the display is not althought it's lit. So its only the display command circuits that don't work. Nothing I can do?

Head to your local radio shack and get a can of electrical contact cleaner and blast it out. Mine went snorkeling with me in Maui last fall and I had never transferred my 60+ phone number list to the sim card. Blasted it, reassembled, check for operation, no-go, disassemble again...5 or 6 times I guess. Finally got it to work but like you with no display. Luckily, a co-worker had the same phone and I was able to blindly work my way through the menus, copy the numbers to my sim, then transfer over to my new phone. No, I never did get the display going. Hope it works for you.

You can try flushing it thoroughly with deionized water and then drying it ... but you run the risk of making it worse. I have done several notebook computers that had drinks poured onto the keyboards with mixed results.

snipped-for-privacy@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com, 427Cobraman snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com 8/01/06 11:11:

lucky you (for the snorkeling, not for taking your phone with you :-)

Hmmm... Apparently there's not much hope. I didn't think of tranferring the numbers to the sim card, always wondered what's the use of it, now I know. I understand your sim card wasn't (too) affected by the water.

Thanks to you all who contributed. I guess it really means "trash it and get a new phone". Sh.t! (Sorry but I'm really p....d off)

LCD's are very complex devices, at this point it is hard to know whether or not the screen or the drivers for the screen have failed. The nature of the beast however is that it rarely pays to attempt repair at the component level. High specialized equipment is required for SMT repairs. At the factory, they can slap the PCB onto a signature analysis system, and it will ID the failed component in about 10 seconds, and they can decide if it is worth attempting repair.

My daughter had the same phone. The phone committed suicide. Apparently when she was out of the room, she got a call. The phone vibrated itself off a desk and landed directly into a glass of water that was on the floor. I took it apart, tried drying it in an oven (low temperature obviously), and spraying it with alcohol....all to no avail. I ended up selling it on ebay for parts.

And if you think that a phone committing suicide is unusual, my daughter has a friend that had the same phone that died in the exact same method....although I think it may have fallen into a glass of tea.

OK, I understand fixing the phone is hopeless. What about the battery? I take it there's no electronics in it, only chemistry, as far as I can remember my physics courses. Once in the water => forever lost, or not? I'm asking because I have an opportunity to get a new phone which has no battery: should I get it and use my [once soaked] battery? or is the battery hurt?

-- Fjordur

I've been lucky with soaked cell phones. The faster you can drive out the water, the better the odds of success. I use fairly high heat from a blow dryer. I also use a microscope to look at as much of the circuits I can get to and look for tiny rust spots or anything else that doesn't look right, a sharpened toothpick is gentle enough to clean whatever I see. If the phone still has problems, I leave it powered up. The gentle heat of internal working circuitry may be enough to drive off deeply hidden moisture the blow dryer can't reach, This is especially true for the display, which should not be exposed to the high heat of the blow dryer.

The display is generally the item most prone to irreversable damage. It depends on the design. Some displays allow water to wick in. Heat will not help if this happens. Others are fairly water tight. I recently salvaged a phone that fell in 3 feet of muddy water. It took 10 minutes to find it and 2 hours to get high heat on it. The display appeared lost but came back perfectly after sitting powered up 24 hours.

BTW, modern batteries may indeed have electronics inside them to watch over charge conditions. My laptop battery has a well populated circuit board aside from the usual thermal fuse.

Dennis Harper