All bets are off ! I cannot help the way our 2nd level support team (this forum) still will do. However I can only mention because I may be the next one who happened to be concerned by the same I ordered already a 2nd display and a 2nd battery for sure.
1 thing I learned from the other topic article: Never use a hair dryer even not on lower temperature level. But the 2nd I deeply miss from the FP2 development team is the hardware functional test application. They must have it in their laboratory
In your case the red light shows the main issue with the battery. Then I would make 1st bet on this to replace at first.
Thanks - I thought the same about the battery. For reasons I won’t explain here, I currently have an older FP2 waiting to be returned. I (just now) tried the battery from that in my current phone and got the same result. I also tried every other replaceable module individually and still got the same result. So it looks like the problem is in the core module, or in some combination of the modules. It’s not looking good
One thing I’ve noticed. The core module now rattles faintly if I shake it gently. My old FP2 doesn’t. So I’m thinking either there is something in there that shouldn’t be (e.g. rice) or something has come loose.
Generally if it comes to electronic devices somehow spoiled by another fluid…switch off and/or remove the battery as quick as possible to prevent any further damage by short-circuits.
Rinsing with clean water is no good idea, as it contains several minerals, salts and other conductive materials. So if you can wait try to get some demineralized/distilled water or ultra pure water first. Here we can get some dem. water in any drugstore for low prise.
Whether you try and rinse the phone with it before letting it dry properly, may take some days or take it apart as far as you can to do the rinsing. Assure proper entire drying before assembling it again and trying to start it after inserting the accumulator. If nothing helps, I guess you lost this fight and need further service.
My FP2 survived being dropped in salt water, even if I got it out of the water in less than, say, 15 seconds. Surviving falling in salt water is difficult to a mobile phone.
Here is what I did:
Immediately dropped it down in freshwater, just for e few seconds.
Unscrewed it completely, removing all parts that could be removed.
Flushed the separate parts briefly in freshwater.
Placed all the parts in the an electrical kitchen own, turned the owen on 50 degrees, and left the parts there for 4-5 hours.
Reassembled the phone, charged for a few minutes, turned it on. It worked, and has worked since, now 3 months later.
That two things look dangerous from my point of view. Common water (not distilled water) is conductive and has minerals and other particles that electrical circuits don’t particulary enjoy (thus could cause short-circuits), and a heat of 50 degress, well… could melt some parts.
I’m just trying to be cautious for the people that will read your message; they might not have the luck you’ve had… Anyway, congrats to your FP2, it’s a true survivor!
Edit: My former Nexus 4 almost died because of an accidental quick bath on the bathroom sink. And that was fresh water, in fact.
Yes, I’m sure you’re right that I had a good piece of luck.
I’m not sure if there are any parts in an FP2 that melts at 50 degree? – but I am not any authority on the subject. By the way, I did open the door to the owen quite often in the beginning, to feel the temperature, not knowing if “50 degrees” on the not very new owen really was 50 degrees (and not 70), and it never felt very warm, so perhaps it really was a bit less than 50 degrees.
On freshwater: I only know that it has less minerals and is less conductive than salty water from the sea.
Me neither! But if it’s not recommended to use a hair drier… I guess an owen is less recommended yet!
I don’t know FP2, but other phone models use a type of glue to stick the screen digitizer and flex cables which is easily removable with a hair drier (I’ve done that a lot of times). That’s maybe the cause, and not parts really partly-melting down?
Absolutely, hahaha
Thank you for taking the time to write your experience!
Therefore the best choice is to use pure alcohol (96%) in place of (clean) water. The alcohol additionally removes residual water.
After washing it in alcohol let it dry for several hours in a normal environment (+/-20°C).
But as with distilled water: You may be days or many hours away from pure alcohol. … I was not, though, far away from it, because I actually had pure alcohol (for burning) in the boat, and should have used it.
Well, for hicking and out door life we often use alcohol-based stoves in Norway. That alcohol is not 96% pure, because they have added red colour and some stuff that tastes terrible, to prevent people from using it to produce drinkable booze. But I cannot think that the colour and taste will have much to say to electronics. We buy it in hard ware stores, and it is not expensive.
IMHO the best procedure to follow in such a case is this (in bold stuff you need to do, the rest is just explaination):
The first thing should always be to remove the battery, since the surest and quickest way to break your phone is a short circuit - without electricity, a short circuit does no harm. So a few secs can make a real difference here. This is really the most important thing!
Use fresh water to clean the phone (not demineralized water yet*), if it fell into salt water or was in dirty water for more than a few secs. This should be done within a few minutes of the incident. Do this, because the second danger arises from corrosion. This is especially true, if salt water is involved. Shake it a little and use paper towels to remove as much water as possible. We don’t want the water to dry inside the phone though (that will make it harder to get salts/limescale out of the phone again. Anecdote: My phone fell into the Mediterranean and when I recovered it after an hour I had hard-core corrosion everywhere (e.g. 1mm deep holes in the aluminium back of the screen!). This was only because it was salt water and electrolytically driven (battery was still in the phone). I guess that I don’t need to tell you that that phone never worked again…
Now you can return home or any place, where you can securely (without losing any parts) disassemble the phone as much as you can or dare. Wash each part again, but this time use demineralised water (any residue salts/limestone might kill the phone later), not alcohol**. Dry the parts with a (paper) towel, then put them some place warm but not hot (you can use the hair-drier, but only from really far away or just on no-heat-mode) into a jar of riceor use silica geld beads ***
I know that you want to see asap after such an accident, if the phone still works, but try to resist as long as possible to even put the battery back, let alone try turning on the phone. Never directly try turning on the device after it fell into water. In your case, that might have killed the device.
Clean all (golden) contacts with a q-tip, maybe use some alcohol on the q-tip instead of water in this step. Reassemble the phone.
Only now put back the battery and try to turn it on. If it is dead, alcohol in form of a drink can come in real handy now.
*demineralized/distilled water is also quite aggressive in terms of corrosion/pH.
**Alcohol dries much faster and is less agressive in terms of pH, but it is way more aggressive as a solvent. Especially the screen, painted plastic parts etc can be damaged by alcohol. If you can make sure it only comes into contact with electronics, you might use, otherwise just use demineralized water, dry it with towels and then let it sit in a warm place or a jar of rice for a few days. Corrosion is really not such a big issue, if it is not electrolytically driven (battery is removed!). Also, if you have dried salts/limestone: alcohol is in contrast to water a non-polar solvent and thus not able to remove it. (As Johannes has pointed out: ethanol is polar!)
Ethanol is most definitely polar, just not as polar as water.
If you have silica gel beads (the ones that come in those little “do not eat” packets as part of other packaging), this is generally recommended as rice dust can in some cases make things worse. They can be ‘reset’ by drying them in an oven at 50 C.
Yeah, right, sorry! I’ll edit my answer to reflect that.
This is a good idea! I actually never tried rice to be honest. I just read it a lot and never anyone saying that it could be bad. I’ll edit my answer to reflect that.
Hey there, disassembling and cleaning with contact spray is a good way out of the issue.
But be careful, dont spray much of it on or in the display, it would cause a thin oily film…
The main problem is the water whitch stays under the heat/protect plates on the cores.
Long drying without plugged battery at moderate temperatures is recommened too… Heat is dangerous, your oven is not very precisios at so low temperatures.
