Hello folks, here’s a story about fairphone5 and water, in case it helps anyone…
TLDR; Happy ending: My fairphone 5 fall in the toilet, after dismantling, drying by towel, and leaving in a warm place over night, it works without issue.
Here’s fun part of story. I took my phone to toilet at night. As I’m not huge fan of bright lights, I didn’t turn on the light. When I finished my business, I flushed, put my phone next to sink, in a bad way that it slipped and fell, making a splash sound. Panicked, and dumb as I was, I pressed the toilet flush instead of the light switch. After a second in shock, I turned on the light and rescued my phone out of the toilet.
I wrapped it in a towel as quick as I can, dried outside thoroughly. Pressed the power button, and it was still on. Then I removed the battery and put it in a big bowl of rice. After a while I thought I should shake it creating inertia for water to go out of the phone, it seemed there was quite some water inside, as it kept coming.
Finally I realized that I have a fairphone and I can completely dismantle it. (Thanks for ✏ How to handle water damage )
At that point, I rested it on a lint-free towel, dismantled the display piece, removed cover of top module (exposing cameras) and removed the bottom module. Every piece had water inside. I don’t know how worse I made it by shaking it, and what would happen if I dismantled it immediately.
I dried each piece removing all visible water signs, then I put a thick towel on top of heater, and put all components in some glass containers on a towel, letting it air over the night. There was no visible heat where the phone was, but it was overall warmer then rest of my place.
In the morning, I reinspected it, and put it back together. I was quite worried with cameras getting dust, as there seemed to be a tiny speck on the main lens, I blew it with a syringe removing anything visible. Similarly I cleaned inside the lens cap.
After power on, everything seem to work fine, camera quality not affected as far as I can tell…
In hindsight, I should have not kept in on, shaken it, or waste time with rice. I also probably should have waited longer as it mentions in the
A note to fairphone folks, an official video on what to do in this situation would be most welcome. (I couldn’t find if there is one)
