Fairphone got wet

Since a few people seem to have dropped their FP into their toilets I’d like to mention that according to Feng Shui you should always close the toilet / put the lid down when you are not using it, to prevent the Qi energy from escaping. This could also lessen the risk for the FP of course if you have to take it with you in the bathroom. :wink:

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A new battery might very likely not help with the problems you have with apps and charging. I think you actually don’t need to buy a new battery if it still performs well.
As you can see above, it is not recommended to dry your phone so quickly with a radiator and fans. Bags of silica seem to have worked very well for many people.
Sure you can try to find a fellow FPer who could lend you his battery but it wil most probably not fix your issues.

thanks i was afraid of this answer. i was hoping that i don’t actually need to buy a whole new motherboard, but all is not lost, as i didn’t open the thing yet. I don’t think it is still wet after 3 weeks tho…

Hello everybody,
my phone (FP1) got wet yesterday in heavy rain. I opened it completely and let it dry. I works all fine now.
BUT: I just made a phone call and hear a little “tapping” sound. It clicks or taps somehow inside the phone. The other person on the line hears it more like a really loud beating or drumming sound, they can hardly understand anything I’m saying. I’m afraid there’s a little short-circuit inside the phone?! But where? How can I find out? What can I do about it?
Thanks a lot!
Doda

Open it up again and let it dry for longer. One day usually doesn’t do it.
I know it sucks but patience is the most effective in this situation.

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Hello everyone! My fairphone 2 fell into water, I got it out right away and laid it out to dry for a few days. After drying it does boot but the touchscreen is going haywire. There is an endless amount of actions perfomed without the screen being touched.

You might want to check the #waterwiki

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If your phone gets wet, get the battery out as fast as possible. If no damage has occured yet, the probability is big that you will get it to work again. I very often dismantle old electronic equipment, 10, 20, 30 years old, and very dirty (lots of dust and so on). If they are not too old, that is, if the capacitors and breadbords are not made of paper (30-100 years old), I just drown them in a kitchen sink with with warm not hot water and detergent I use for cleaning dishes. Then I take a brush and clean them still drowned. Afterwards I take paper towels, dry them as good as possible, then rinse them with distilled water (to avoid crystal formation), dry them again, and then I put them next to the heating. After 1 to 2 weeks I assemble them again, and all of the worked nicely again: old radios, computers, lab equipment, and so on!

The danger is: the battery gets short cut, so you get short circuit currents, which will probably damage your phone.

For FP 3 a water protection according to IP 67 might be nice, though! Or at least a good working short circuit protection together with a water tight battery compartment.

I don’t want to go too off-topic, but please keep in mind that water protection would probably go against repairability (battery replacement, module exchange…).

Not necessarily. It is already quite safe with the bumper. And I have serveral items, e.g. data loggers, old models not being water tight, new models being water tight. The difference is not that big. You have to think of it in the design part of the project, of course. But when you compile the design inputs for a new product, you always have a lot of items to consider. I think, next to repairability, avoiding the need to repair something is even more sustainable.

Hello!
My FP2 dived into a swimming pool…
He gave some signs of life, but then… black screen.
Does not work anymore at all.
I did all what is recommended there: How to handle water damage
But no way.
Now I’m thinking about sending it to his homeland to try to make it repair. But Before, I would like to test if it is - or not - the screen which is dead.
I didn’t find any #fairphoneangels where I live, in Paris.
Is there someone in Paris ready to help me to check if my display device is broken or not ?
Would take less than 10 mn, and I offer a coffee or a beer !

Hello iro,
my wife put our son’s iPhone 6 in the washing machine (no hot wash, thanks God…). We let it dry on a rice bed for a full three weeks. Then we turned it on, and it really started again. At first the screen had huge dark spots, the speaker volume was very low and battery life was poor. All problems improved over time, and after two more weeks the iPhone was as good as new. And very clean indeed…
So, what I want to say, it is good to be patient (if possible…). The Fairphone has the huge advantage that you can disassemble it. This should accelerate the drying process considerably. But I would recommend a drying period of at least two weeks before you try to reactivate your phone. But when even an iPhone comes back to life after a laundering cycle, chances should be very good for your Fairphone, too…
Best wishes,
Klaus.

Congratulations for getting your phone to work again, but everybody else … don’t use rice and consult the waterwiki instead, as @iro already did.

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Well, in the case of the iPhone rice (or patience?) worked fine. We put the phone on top of a rice bed. And you can’t open the iPhone except for a tiny hatch for the nano SIM where no rice corn can get through. So rice could have done no major harm to the iPhone. Might be different for a disassembled Fairphone, I have to concede that. Maybe Silicagel is the better option here. Yet, I think it is best to take your time and let the phone (or its disassembled parts) enough time to dry thoroughly -by whatever method you prefer. I still love rice. To eat and to dy things…

Rice corns are not stable though. They often dissolve into dust and that is a dangerous thing for electronics. You were lucky, but for the future remember: never use rice, no matter how compact and un-modular the device is.

Thanks for the warning. We are very careful now to put neither the iPhone nor the Fairphone into the laundry any more. And having the rice being disassembled inside our digestive tracts than inside our phones is much more pleasing anyway…

@jaymanu is currently in the process for becoming a fairphoneangels in Paris. (Have you tried paris # fairphone . community ? It should already work. :wink: )

I think you mean @.

Yep, I mean “@”, but I wanted to make it harder for bots… :upside_down_face: I guess they are becoming smarter… :see_no_evil: What do I know… :joy_cat:

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