mtn
MegaDork
9/29/09 11:53 p.m.
Went to bed last night. Had a glass of ice water, phone was right next to it. The condensation from the cup dripped down, pooled, and damaged the phone to the point it won't work at all. I got a new phone today, so thats not the problem.
The problem is that I have some pictures that I would like to save, namely of my dog who passed away. Any way to save the memory card and get the pictures back?
Its a shot out in the dark, but I figured I'd ask.
Strizzo
PowerDork
9/30/09 12:01 a.m.
pull it apart as best you can, and let it dry out for a couple days. i went into the ocean with my Razr in my pocket and even that would turn on after drying out for about a week. the keypad was shot, but it came on. another phone went into the pool with me, and was fine after a week of drying out other than the camera no longer working.
what kinda phone is it, btw?
Brian
MegaDork
9/30/09 12:06 a.m.
Even tho you have a new phone I would stick the old one in a bowl of riceto suck out the water, unless you have LOTS of silicone bead packets from shoes and assorted leather items.
Does your old phone have a memory card slot? If so that should be the easiest way to do it.
Or you could transfer things over Bluetooth.
One last option applies if your phone runs on a sim chip. If so pop in an active chip and just "text" then out.
Thats all I have, good luck
edit After rereading your post, are the pictures on a removable micro or mini sd card and you want to save the card? Once again, bowl of rice to dry it out. If it is built in memory in the phone, you will need to salvage the phone to some extent.
mtn
MegaDork
9/30/09 12:22 a.m.
Its a Samsung SGH-A707
I think that from what you folks are saying, my best bet will be to take it apart and let it dry out. It doesn't have a memory card, its memory was just the stuff built into the phone. The new phone has the same SIM card, but none of the graphics transferred over.
BTW, the phone doesn't turn on at all
Jay
UltraDork
9/30/09 7:58 a.m.
Wow, I'm surprised condensation from a glass of water damaged the phone that much. My Dad's new-ish Samsung phone once fell out of his pocket while he was working on a sump pump into ~a foot of almost-frozen, filthy water. He broke through the ice crust the next morning and fished it out. He let it dry for a few days, but even after all that it still works perfectly. The battery was toast but that was it.
mtn
MegaDork
9/30/09 8:06 a.m.
I think I might have fried it, I put the battery back in right away yesterday. I actually knew you weren't supposed to, but it was about 6 AM, I had been to bed at about 3 AM, and my brain wasn't thinking. I'll dry it out a week and try it though.
Pull battery.
Remove back.
Soak in alcohol (vodka works in a pinch)
Lay on back of refrigerator overnight.
Call the as*hole who threw your phone in a retention pond from a 3rd floor hotel balcony and tell him "it's on mother berkeleyer."
Strizzo
PowerDork
9/30/09 8:10 a.m.
the battery is the most likely casualty actually. the phone that went for a swim in the ocean still worked, it just had to be plugged into the charger and only the power button worked.
NYG95GA
UltraDork
9/30/09 10:33 a.m.
My LG 3400 has taken a dunk twice, first in a cup of sweet ice tea, and once through a cycle in the washing machine. Both times I pulled the battery and set it in front of a hair dryer set on warm, for about a half hour. Still works fine.
put in a bag full of dry white rice.....the rice will suck the moisture out
I dropped my Nokia in a glass of iced tea and it would light up the screen but not do anything else.
I took it in to the cell phone store and the guy was able to plug it into a machine that pulled all my saved numbers and data off of it and put them on my new nokia.
That was the old brick nokias. They were indestructable.
Strizzo
PowerDork
9/30/09 1:59 p.m.
In reply to andrave:
i left one on top of a friends car, and it subsequently fell off in the middle of the street and was run over and rained on before being found and returned to me. the person found me by answering a phone call. once i got it back, i replaced the screen with one from a "parts" phone and all was well until it was retired some years later
PeteWW
Reader
9/30/09 2:10 p.m.
My Nokia was washed - two different times - in my pants pocket. As has been suggested, I removed the battery and let it sit for several weeks. I replaced the battery, but it turned out that I didn't need to.
mtn
MegaDork
9/30/09 3:43 p.m.
Okay, update on it: I plugged it in, before the rice, and it kind of works.
That big screen on the left doesn't work. The little one on the right does. I'm going to try to dry it out longer, and then if that doesn't work I'll try to get a new screen if its possible for cheap.
You should be able to pull the pictures off the memory with a link cable. If you get a copy of the menu structure, you can likely get away with navigating them long enough to pull the pictures w/o a screen.
Can't help you with saving the phone, but I've picked up the habit of sending any pics I actually want to keep as a "picture message" to my home e-mail. My provider (Virgin Mobile) allows that, YMMV.
always a good idea to backup data. I once lost a cell phone to a forklift. I do not think a single part was salvagable. I am sure the company that did the insurance loved seeing the condition of it when they got it
NYG95GA
UltraDork
10/1/09 2:31 p.m.
I'm not a "phone guy", but as a locksmith back in the 80s, I was compelled to have one, back when almost nobody had them. About 1987, I got a Motorola "bag phone" to take service calls with. Just the 6" antenna on that thing weighed about as much as my current phone does.The average cell phone is rated about a half Watt power. The Moto had close to 5 Watts pump. You could go to a place with no signal, crawl down in a hole, and still make a call. Sadly, it's analog instead of digital, so they don't let me use it any more.