AMALA, one of our fellow Shadow users, had the unfortunate experience of dropping their phone into water. Luckily they did the smart thing and saved their Shadow and themselves a lot of money.
If you have soggy Shadow:
- Immediately pull the battery cover off and remove the battery. This takes away the power source, and we all know electricity and water do not mix.
- Using a lint free cloth, dry as much of the water as possible.Â
- Pull out your SIM card and Memory card, put them on a paper towel in a safe place.
- Open up all the little covers: memory card, power/mini-usb.
- Open the slide (dry this off too).
- Get a nice big gallon Ziploc and fill it part way with rice (uncooked
). - Put your Shadow in it.
- Fill up more with Rice
- Set it somewhere safe. Every couple of hours or so shake up the bag to get dry rice next to the Shadow.
- If you live in an arid (dry) environment it is okay to leave the bag open, it will help dry faster.
- If you live in a humid environment I suggest leaving the Ziploc closed so the rice only has to deal with the moisture in the Shadow.
- For best results keep the Shadow in the rice for about 48 hours for maximal effect.
- Put the battery back in, cross your fingers and power it on.
This method is a lot safer than the oven method which ends up cooking a lot of phones because we all have attention problems
Related posts:
December 17th, 2007 at 11:04 am
I just rescued an iPod Nano that went through the wash cycle using a version of this method.
A better replacement for rice, if you happen to have it around, is the Cat Litter Crystals. Basically this stuff sucks up moisture big time.
Kermit Woodall
Managing Editor
GadgetNutz.com
December 17th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
Hi Kermit,
Cat Litter Crystals are great. Note: to reader’s look for ‘clumping’ cat litter
They do have a tendency to make a lot of dust though so you have to be careful with that.
December 17th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
I’m the user that this happend to. I hve never heard of cat crystls but i can see how it would work much like rice does. However I would have to agree with what mike said about the dust. I was in a panic due to the very little amount of dust rice leaves. also cat litter crystals break easier which could cause very small fragments of the litter to get inside the phone compartments and cause problems later down the line. My shadow is up and running great again. It tweeked a little at start up and it kind of bounced around for a little bit from one thing to the next but it worked.
One MAJOR Plus and way to save it is to get it out of the water IMMEDIATELY!!! I called tmobile they have shadow experts and i was told some horror stories. One about a man who dropped his phone (Razr) in his cats water bowl without knowing it and it was in the water for 2 days. he took a blow dryer (DO NOT TRY THIS)to it. One week later it actually worked perfectly again.
The rep i was speaking to dropped her Dash in the sink while doing dishes for over 2 minutes it was in the water. She now knows about rice and how it saved her Dash.
When you go to a restaurant often times you will see rice in the salt shakers the reason is so the rice does not get moist and stick.
Rice saved my shadow and a lot of money.
Im glad you guys posted this on the main page because it happends to people all the time.
Peace,
And thanks to everyone who was there the day I needed support. I am so glad this site is here and I am a part of it.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
why does rice help?
September 19th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
[...] Did you drop your Shadow in the water (read: toilet)? See this post. addthis_url = [...]
September 19th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
true story: i dropped my previous phone in the toilet as i flushed it (by fone) in another state then got my shadow
everything happens for a reason
October 13th, 2008 at 1:20 am
[...] Bipinsen sparked this off with his thread on How To Disassemble Your Shadow, which is very informative, and should only be done if your warranty is void, t-mobile won’t replace it, and no one wants to buy it from you. Which got me to thinking how many ways have the dear Members of the AllShadow.com community destroyed their Shadows? The most famous way is dropping it in the toilet. [...]