Electronic devices and water don’t mix. As for cell phones, because they’re often ubiquitous for their owners, a constant inanimate companion, they often end up in whatever water happens to be available – a swimming pool, the Red Sea, a bathtub, or even floating in a toilet like so much flotsam. When this sort of immersion occurs, bad things usually happen to the device. Afterwards, if you see water droplets underneath the LCD display, the first instinct for many owners is to … pray – especially if the damaged cell phone is expensive.
It doesn’t even have to be submerged in water to be water-damaged. If it merely gets wet, such as being left outside in the rain, it can be rendered just as inert as if it were dropped off a boat into the blue-green Pacific near the Marianna Trench.
It gets worse; it doesn’t even have to appear wet. The curse of the dot – tiny liquid-damage indicators – sometimes referred to as “the sensors from Hell” – can change color – indicating water damage when the unit appears to be dry. These liquid-damage indicators, tiny disks located inside the battery chamber and often inside the phone itself, may change color if exposed to sweat, steam, extreme humidity, or condensation. However this happens, it’s enough to void a manufacturer’s warranty if the color doesn’t change back.
The nightmare is intensified if water damage occurs in a cell phone, a common problem, and a consumer attempts to get the thing fixed. Most cell phone repair companies avoid water-damaged cell phones, or cell phones with wrong-colored dots, as if they were the wicked witch from Oz, afraid of their own meltdown, but there are exceptions. If consumers are persistent enough, a cell phone repair company that does repair water-damaged phones – or can merely get a recalcitrant dot to resume the correct color – can be found.
